Starting the new year off on some kind of foot

Howdy, folks.

If you've spoken to me or seen any of my online conversations, you'll notice I've been using the excuse of, "I'm in the middle of a move," quite often. I love having a built in excuse for everything. It's like blaming the rain. But it's also a valid excuse for me. It's hard to pack everything you've accumulated over three years into a Honda Civic and into a storage unit.

It's not hard for me to shed things, though. I can take one look at something that used to mean something to me and say, "Fuck it," and throw it in the trash. I can't do that with books. I've donated some books, sure, but the majority of books I have stay with me. And books take up a lot of space. A boxful of books is also pretty damn heavy. When I put a box of books on my front passenger seat, the seatbelt warning goes off.

So it's taking a long time to get moved.

2015 was a good year. Death Thing was published, it was well-reviewed, and seemed to be selling well. I met a lot of good folks thanks to Death Thing including Danny Gardner and Will Viharo. Both these guys are top class writers. Look at the bottom of this blog post for some buy links. You really should read their work.

One thing that binds us is we all wrote for Double Life Press. Craig McNeely picked Death Thing up and commissioned a great looking cover by Dyer Wilk. I'm convinced the cover is half the reason a lot of people picked up the book in the first place. Alas, as with a lot of small presses, Double Life Press couldn't keep on in the midst of uncontrollable circumstances outside of the press. Any bystander could see the quality of work Double Life Press was putting out and think that DLP would be around forever. Hell, I thought they would be.

It should be made clear that I am incredibly grateful for the work Craig McNeely put in for me. Death Thing getting published was a career milestone for me and I am grateful for the experience. DLP closing means I have regained all the rights to Death Thing and am free to do what I want with it. At first, I thought I was going to try to get it republished by another small press but it's already been published and a lot of mileage it got early on is probably about as much mileage as it's going to get. It probably wouldn't be worth it to republish Death Thing unless something big happened (I'm working on getting something big to happen).

Instead, I've decided I'll probably have Weekly Weird Monthly reprint Death Thing to keep it in print and available for people to buy while hopefully retaining the reviews that were left on the original printing. I will try to get the sequels to Death Thing published at other small presses because there are a few more Death Thing tales to be told.

I read at Malvern Books in Austin, TX last night to promote Death Thing and Cat Food. The reading went very well. Before the event started, I was looking through the Facebook event page to see who all had RSVP'd. I saw the name MP Johnson and turned to Nina and said, "That's gotta be a mistake. He lives in Minnesota." It was no mistake. He pulled up and came to the show. He's escaping the winter in Minnesota in Austin; a wise decision. I first read MP Johnson's work at Out of the Gutter with a story called "Woods Porn." It was the weirdest fucking thing Out of the Gutter has ever published and I loved it. Unfortunately, I can't find the link to it either because I'm inept or I've slipped into a parallel universe where that story never existed.

MP with me and my unruly beard. I really hope he digs the books. 

It was also nice to see some old faithfuls come out to hear me read when they've heard the same bad joke ten times. They know who they are. 

2016 is going to be a big year. There's a lot planned for Weekly Weird Monthly. First up is Cheryl Couture's chapbook Beauty Pageant. After that, Sam Trevino's chap of poetry, Let Me Take Off My Wolf Mask and my own novella, Bangface. 

It's going to be a good year. Start it off right with some reading material:

Death Thing

Cat Food

Toilet Stories From Outer Space

Hard-Boiled Heart by Will Viharo

A Negro and an Ofay by Danny Gardner

Cattle Cult! Kill! Kill! by MP Johnson

Holy damn, it's almost Thanksgiving

Hot God. It's almost Thanksgiving. Time flies.

Nothing much new to report. I'm nipple-deep in a new project I'm working on. I alluded to it in Long Beach, CA but now that it's almost done I can't finish it. It's a space-time, teleportation, truck stop kind of private eye novella.

Other than that, I'm working on a whole lot of stuff. Weekly Weird Monthly is getting set to launch Cheryl Couture's debut chapbook, Beauty Pageant. It's going to be a good one, folks.

Austin artist and photographer, Josh Verduzco, approached me about doing my portrait. He said he was going to throw tomatoes at me. I love tomatoes. I couldn't refuse. One good shirt later, my portrait was taken. We made a lot of ketchup and we're currently trying to sell it to Whole Foods to sell as "Organic, Hand Pressed, Tomato Dressing."

Here are the portraits.

Best of Austin 2015

Holy cow.

I was the critic's pick for Best Author Reading for the Austin Chronicle's Annual Best of Austin awards. 

Francois Pointeau and Owen Egerton also won some literary awards and my former employer, BookPeople, continues their reign as best bookstore in Austin. We got to party for free, got a nice tshirt, drank a lot of Austin Beerworks and ate a lot of Via 313. Sometimes life's just damn good.

I've been in Texas since 2010, though.

The Weekly Weird Monthly Automatons at the Austin Chronicle Party 

Nina, me, Cheryl, and Chris

Austin is losing Francois Pointeau to the road soon. We sent him off at the Whip In at his book release party. It was wildly successful. I had the honor of hosting the whole thing and all I can say is that Austin got a whole lot less French. Get Francois's book by clicking here. 

Francois as a boxed wino. The If Onlys on stage.

Death Thing is continuing to generate positive interest and I'm starting to pursue next steps career-wise. It's overwhelming but it's also necessary to keep forward movement. I think Death Thing is perfect for the screen and I'm talking to a lot of folks on how to get that done. 

I'll be in Long Beach on Sunday, October 4th, at Gatsby Books for a Death Thing release party but I'm also releasing my new chapbook, Cat Food, there. You can get both books here. 

MCDONALDSINSPACE is the code to get 13% off any order of two or more products at the Weekly Weird Monthly store

I'm extremely grateful to the city of Austin and Texas in general. I don't know that I'd be writing as much as I am today if it wasn't for a rather sudden move to Texas. Texas revitalized me. It threw me around and sent me to some depths in the beginning, sure, but it was for the best.

I'll be updating this blog more. I'm terrible at internetting. 

Movies You Don't Want to See Reviewed by Someone Who Didn't See Them: Epic Star Stuff Edition

Greetings. I am here to review the movies you never admitted you don't want to see. So next time you're at a party and you have to fake you've seen movies to round off the edges*, let this be your guide.

 

INTERSTELLAR

This is typical Christopher Nolan stuff. It starts with a big idea and ends with an actor ejaculating all over himself about some nonsense nobody cares about. Nolan's Memento was a great piece of comedy because the whole time you have no idea it's just one long masturbation joke until the end with that expertly filmed bathroom shot of the main character looking at himself in the mirror. You realize, Oh! He's not squinting because he's trying to read his tattoos!

Nothing like a mirror to get in the mood.

Matthew McConaughey may have won an Oscar for the biopic of Dallas Cowboys' owner, Jerry Jones, in Dallas Buyers Club but we all know his best work was in a Lincoln commercial. He convinced me so thoroughly he was a douchebag and had no concept of the lines he was forced to read. He just reads them in a raspy voice and guesses as to what emotion to attach to them. Maybe he's brilliant.

Anyways, Interstellar is not what you think it is. It's a ghost movie that can never really decide on the metaphysical properties of ghosts. Are they supernatural? Are they echoes from a rip in space-time? Are they interdimensional beings just fucking with us? Nolan doesn't decide. He just flicks that little plot line into the story and bets on the fact that we, like rabid dogs, will worship his toes because of its complexity. 

Interstellar was done before and it was done better. I've got four names for you. Tommy Lee Jones, Clint Eastwood, Donald Sutherland, and James Garner. 

Republicans... IN SPACE

Motherfuckin' Space Cowboys, man. Space Cowboys was done without any of the pretension of Interstellar and all of the emotional impacts were delivered on the far less malleable face of Clint Eastwood. 

Blah, blah, blah, Matthew McConaughey drives a Lincoln into an asteroid belt, warps to another planet, and sends one last text message to his daughter before the uncaring vacuum of space rips his face off his bones and turns his bones back into star stuff. The end.

STAR WARS VII: The Force Awakens

Before we begin here's a trigger alert: I do not care too much for Star Wars. Stop reading if you are tempted to commit violence upon my face. 

Blue really accents Mars' more understated features.

I, like any other self-respecting American, am fascinated by space and the possibility of other worlds and the species that inhabit them so that we may exploit them for material gain, but apart from the visual aspect of Star Wars, I could never get into the story. There are good characters. There are good lines. I just don't get why Luke gave up on Leia just because she was his sister. Han Solo stared him down in a pissing contest and won. Hats off to Luke, though; I can't even pee in a public restroom.

I looked up piss shy and got this. If he can't pee while one man in vest rubs his shoulders and another stares at his ass, it must be because he's got an erection.

It's an interesting take J.J. Abraham's decided to go with for the Force Awakens. The story focuses on nothing in particular. It meanders through the daily life of a down-and-out failed writer as he travels from planet to planet looking for inspiration for his Great Tatooine Novel.

Along the way, he runs into women who try to help him but end up being related to him. He meets an older man named Handless Luke, they become lovers, but their relationship deteriorates over an imbalanced distribution of hand jobs.

Redesigned ewok. 

Some guy walks around in a Darth Vader suit even though everyone knows the Jedi danced all over his body with a bunch of horny furries. Turns out the guy in the Darth Vader suit is just a metaphor for our unnamed protagonist's dark heart. It can only be defeated through love. But is he capable of such a force?

That force, my friends, awakens.

JURASSIC WORLD

Derpy, derpy, didn't you science folks think that maybe creating a dinosaur maybe wasn't so smart, maybe? Take that smarty-pants, evolutionists and global warmists.

That's the message of this movie. Science is big and cool and can do cool shit like make nuclear bombs and dinosaurs but when it all comes down to it, a snarky, smooth talking, pudgy white guy is smarter than all of science combined and it's all brawn over brains when a flock of fucked-up raptors is aiming for your nutsack. Aiming for your nutsack to cut it off with their big toe fang and eat it like chicken liver, if you didn't understand the danger.

There's a love story here, too. It's the tired old love story between a Hollywood production company and the car company that pays for this 120 minute commercial. Hey, now I know that when I'm being chased by Frankensteinasaur, only a Volvo has the steel frame that can save my eyeballs from popping out of my face while my skull is turning into a million little pieces of utter godlessness. 

That's it, folks.

Check out the Buff Jesus comic on Weekly Weird Monthly and buy some shit. 

Sub-frontal facial

"Why do you insist on calling it a headache when it is obviously a sub-frontal facial pain?" the doctor asked me. He pointed at his face.

"Why do you keep pointing at your dick, Dr. Dickhead?"



That is what I wish I had said in response to my doctor. Of course, the perfect comeback came while recounting the story to my family on the phone.

I thought about scheduling a follow-up appointment with the doctor only to construct the perfect setting to say that but I've found that the more I say it to myself, the less satisfied I'll be when saying it to its intended target.

Some people just don't get the backtalk they deserve and, since he's a doctor, he'll probably come up with a better comeback or he'll prescribe me nothing but suppositories for the rest of my life.

Big things are on the way from Weekly Weird Monthly. News to come!

In the meantime, read a short story. HERE (NSFW).

I left my dignity in the Taco Bell drive thru on MLK and Airport

Yesterday, a few of the Weekly Weirdos were celebrating the release of Weekly Weird Monthly Totally Nubs Out For Spiced Ham. We're getting older now so celebrating consisted of giving everyone a copy of the printed out thing, drinking a beer, then going to Taco Bell and parting ways.

See, Taco Bell is having this promotion. If you buy this abhorrent thing

in a snack box, or whatever the hell they call it, you get a chance to win a Playstation 4. I'm not 15 anymore so this doesn't arouse me in the same way it used to. The only way I'm going to acquire a PS4 is winning it after a Taco Bell induced bout of diarrhea. 

We all ordered our "food." I ordered the meal box from Hell. When we pulled up, the lady gives us a bag, all of our orders intact, but sans my box. I notice this the moment after she closes the window on me. 

So I sit there in silence, staring ahead at the passing cars in front me and contemplating the meaning of my life. I'm not going to honk to get her attention. I decided to just sit there and wait for her to look at the security camera and say to her coworker, "This fucking bearded shithead must want extra ketchup or some shit."

After a few minutes of asking myself why there is no God, she finally reopens the window. 

"Yes?" she asks, probably. I say probably because I wasn't paying attention to anything but my own lonely thoughts and the fact that what I was about to say next was in full view of my girlfriend and comrades who probably didn't know the depths of my pathetic nature.

"So, uh," I say, "I ordered the mega box thing. That's how you win a PS4, right?"

"Yeah," she says, still not aware of the direction my mouth is going.

"So I need the box."

That's right. Give me my fucking box. Because the box has the code. The code is what I have to text to the number to find out if I won or not, god dammit. 

"Oh, ok," she says, turns around, and hands me an empty box. 

We drove away in total silence.

"Don't you dare tell anyone about what you saw today, you fucking assholes."

I didn't win the PS4, by the way, but my toilet and I have been closer since last night. 

BUY THE WWM SPAM MAG NOW

Whilst we can

There's something about Americans who insist on spelling words the British way. I believe that they believe it makes them appear more sophisticated but it really looks like a pathetic attempt to appear sophisticated.

The British Surrender at Yorktown.

To the people I know that do this, this is not a personal attack. This is just my eyes' plea for mercy. I cannot abide another 'whilst' when you mean to write 'while.' The color of the sky is blue, no need for a 'u'.

Declaring ourselves independent of unnecessary vowels.

There is one thing that I don't get, though. These Yankees never spell 'curb' the way the Brits do. The Brits spell it 'kerb.' It's not as sophisticated looking as 'favour' so it gets kicked to the curb. If you insist on adding unnecessary us to your words, you're going to have to use an awkward k and e.

Admittedly, not the nicest thing we ever did. 

Now that that's out of the way.

Listen to the One Page Salon podcast! I'm reading one page of my novel-in-progress Invasion of the Weirdos. I get introduced by Jason Neulander at around the 50 minute mark.

Also! Weekly Weird Monthly is now accepting pre-orders of the Weekly Weird Monthly Totally Nubs Out for Spiced Ham chapbook. It's going to be a nasty delight with work from Ryan Sayles, Chris Rhatigan, Chris Mattix, Nina Barker, Cheryl Couture, Steven Warren, and yours truly. PRE-ORDER THAT SUCKER TODAY!

HEALTH SHIT BELOW

I had an experience with the worst doctor I have ever been to. See, the doctor I originally had under my insurance plan was phenomenal. He was a straight up, no bullshit kind of dude. I can understand some level of condescension from a doctor; they are, after all, superior beings of light. But the doctor I got assigned to after Cool Doc left the practice has to be the biggest turd bag on the planet. I've been having sinus headaches (which I've had since I was a kid). I told him this and he goes on an on about Californians moving here and then complaining about allergies. Save it, doctor. I came here for your medical expertise, not your senior thesis on American migration patterns.

This was the kicker though. He asked, "Why do you think it's sinus headaches?" I answer because it's been bothering me so I looked things up and asked people. He says, "You can't accurately pinpoint things until you've had a formal evaluation, don't you know that?" To which I reply, "That's why I'm fucking here." The guy wore hair gel and stunk of whey protein. I'm going to continue going to him because I hated him so goddamn much and that is very amusing.

Marfa

A few weeks ago we went to Marfa. I'd never been and I have always heard stories about the Marfa lights and the cool, hippie, art town Marfa was. I used to work for a medical contracting company and I had to do one of many networking breakfasts. The very first breakfast I went to, I spoke to only one person. He was a truck driver and he raved about the weirdness of "some city out west" where there was a Prada shop in the middle of nowhere. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about; I just figured truck drivers know everything.

Anyways, Nina and I stayed in a safari tent at El Cosmico in Marfa. It was sunny every day and it rained every night. You'd think the sound of rain would keep you up at night but I was sucking my thumb within ten minutes of the start of the downpour. It was wonderful.

I told myself I would get a lot of writing done but that didn't happen. Sometimes you just need a vacation from everything. Marfa provided.

I learned a lot at El Cosmico.

Weekly Weird Monthly released its first chapbook called My Beard Supports Nothing by Zachary Locklin. It is very good and you should buy it here. Zachary Locklin is a very talented poet and writer. I first published his poems in my short-lived California zine Beggars & Cheeseburgers and we've been friends ever since. His miniseries, War Shark: Fuck Yeah!, was a hit on the even shorter-lived Slagdrop but Weekly Weird has plans to revive that sucker along with some other great projects with the one and only Zachary Locklin.

Next up from Weekly Weird is our chapbook of short stories dedicated entirely to SPAM so be on the lookout. It's coming soon.

As far as my own writing goes, it's coming along. I'm really getting into the meat of my novel and I should be done relatively soon. Some short stories are coming out through various websites/anthologies but I'm not sure when. When they do come out, you can be sure I'll be linking the hell out of them.

Goodnight.

The Weekly Weird Monthly Totally Nubs Out For Spiced Ham

The Weekly Weird Monthly was born out of the need to do creative things. Lots of creative things with absolutely no care for the fact that it is not an absolutely cohesive idea. 

It started with random comics written by me and drawn by Jack Arambula. The name of the project was a joke about how infrequent and randomly it would be updated. It moved onto weird video projects like Eating & Reading and Andrew's Cooking Show (with a hell of a lot more weird video projects to come).

It is now taking on another form that was totally inevitable. It's no secret that I love print. When I lived in California, I was a co-founder of Beggars & Cheeseburgers and I left right as it was learning how to walk. Not only was it learning how to walk but lots of people started caring to watch it learn. It was growing and then I cut it down at the knees when I moved. Issue 3 (which we called Dinner) was released while I lived in San Antonio and Issue 4 (Fourthmeal) was being curated and getting ready to print. 

Working halfway across the country on an exclusively print project was hard and it finally collapsed under its own weight. We were doing weird stuff and when it comes down to it, Jack Arambula and I only do weird stuff. 

The next step was building Slagdrop but there were too many ideas and not enough execution. The only mega-thing we did was Slagdrop Presents America... You're Welcome! and I really see that as the spiritual mother to the print projects the Weekly Weird Monthly is taking on. Let's not get it wrong, Slagdrop was a good idea. Everyone involved was talented but we were all over the place. My center of gravity was to be weird and, without any design at all, Slagdrop collapsed on itself. 

The Weekly Weird Monthly won't collapse on itself. It's designed to be an evolving monster. Content will be on the internet and in print. Each medium will dictate the content as opposed to trying to throw everything in every direction. It also won't collapse because I see it as my baby. It's a baby that is taking a village to raise. The other baby-raisers are: Jack Arambula, Nina Barker, Cheryl Couture, and Chris Mattix.

Enough blah, blah, blah. The Weekly Weird Monthly is going to release a print and eBook chapbook called Weekly Weird Monthly Totally Nubs Out For Spiced Ham. 

We also have a number of other print projects in the pipeline from some of our favorite writers, poets, and artists. 

Just you wait. It's going to be great.

My cooking show

Well, here it is.

The long awaited debut of my internet cooking show titled, "Andrew's Cooking Show."

Eating & Reading

Folks.
Folks.

The Weekly Weird Monthly has been a long gestating project of Jack Arambula and I. The other day we launched a new literary/foodie web show called Eating & Reading.

The first episode pairs Peach Mango Yogurt with Charles Bukowski.