Rob Hill’s Borrowing Blockbusters series on his Bad Movie Bible YouTube channel continues with Part Two of “Bruceploitation.” If you missed it, here is the link to Part One.
If you haven’t figured it out, I love a bad-good movie, and I also enjoy learning new information about how good-bad movies are made. It’s like kismet for me when it comes to Hill’s videos.
Remember, there is still one final installment of “Bruceploitation!”
In reality, I was traveling to Texas to visit my family, especially my father. See, back on Labor Day, while my dad was staying with my brother and his family, my father had an angina episode. Though scary as all hell, it wasn’t a heart attack, and he is fine. He’ll have some follow ups with his doctor and cardiologist, but on the whole, he’s fine. I was staying with him for the week, to make sure that he took it easy and recovered. Besides, I like spending time with my dad. And I got to see my whole Texas family, so considering what had happened, it actually was a pretty good trip.
Before the trip, it was awful. I got a call from my brother saying that Dad was having chest pains and they were taking him to the hospital. My brothers and sisters-in-law did a great job of keeping me and my family in the loop on what was going on, but being 1,500 miles away, all that it created in me was a feeling of powerlessness. Cheering on from afar, but knowing there was nothing I could do other than get on a plane.
Funny how there are still instances and situations that I can find myself in that just smack me down to feeling like a helpless child.
Though I told myself no to go there, not to think those thoughts; I did. I thought of living in a world without my father. To exist orphaned, no parents, lost and adrift. So what if I am middle aged? My folks are supposed to be here forever.
But I already lost my mother. It will be six years this October. I can feel the gloom building in me as I get closer to that date. It’s not as bad as it was. I’m healing, learning to remember all the things that made her a wonder mom, and all the quirky weird stuff that she did that made her uniquely our mother.
Just not ready to lose my father.
And I haven’t, for which I am thankful. Still got some more time to make him laugh.
(It’s just another day)
I tried to explain the “Juice Era” of baseball to my daughter this morning. Talk about a subject that I never thought I would have to get into with her. It all started when she asked me what I thought was the most important position in baseball, pitcher, followed by catcher. Then I told her some stories about Pudge Rodriguez, the greatest catcher of all time, and how I got to watch him play back in Texas. With all I was saying, I mentioned the “Juice Era” and that lead her to asking questions about cheating and players using steroids. You know, normal breakfast conversations.
We might drive up the Hudson Valley this weekend and take a look at antique stores. It is Labor Day weekend, and getting out of the City seems like a good idea. Sometimes when we head up the Hudson with no real plan to do anything, that’s when we wander into some old antique store that is just crammed full of stuff. Most of it is pretty cool, and a little more expensive than we are willing to spend. But now and then, we do come across a gem of an odd piece of something. We have a wall mounted thermometer from Maine that’s in our kitchen, and the last time we headed out, my wife found some odd drawings of cats. I’m curious to find old vinyl to mount on the wall, and the wife would like a large piece of art to put up in the living room. It’s like treasure hunting for us.
If they lose this weekend, Lord help us all. #COYS
I’m having a hard time getting myself motivated. To do anything, really.
Doesn’t help that I got two rejections in the last twenty-four hours. But this is part of the gig; Lots of rejection, and trying to not let it get to you. I’m at the point now where I am beginning to think that the story really isn’t that great. Or it needs a rewrite. Or maybe I just need to burn it and rid it’s presence from my life.
The other thing is that I have spent the past hour catching up on my flash reading. I subscribe to a large number of online journals who email out flash fiction, and I have fallen behind of late, or the whole Summer. Anyway, I’m trying to get on top of it, and see what is worth reviewing. Nothing has been peaking my interest, and I started to think maybe it’s not the fiction, but me. Maybe my head isn’t in the right space for this.
Time to take a break.
More like changing gears, because here I am working on the blog. I have to get in my 1,000 words a day. (You know, it’s not so much writing as it is typing, and I think somewhere Truman Capote is laughing with me.) The only way to get better at something is practice. Practice! PRACTICE!
As I sit here, I remember once, maybe back in college or sometime in my past, there was this writer complaining how much they hated blogs and bloggers. They said it was useless writing as all bloggers do is bitch about things in badly written ways. I don’t think writer was totally wrong.
Yet, I feel that someone needs to sit down here and take a stand to say that some writing should just bitching, complaints, and listing of grievances. Isn’t bitching a form of expression?
Sure, it would be better if I could string this expression in a clear narrative form, that has a well-defined beginning, middle, and end – with that end being a wonderful conclusion the initial thought. That would be nice and clean and concise.
But life is messy and not clean, and sometimes this human experience is muddy, and gross, and undefined and rough and jagged. And uses bad grammar and has typos or type-o’s, or however one would spell that word.
Sometimes you just got to get it off your chest to move on. And sometimes you want to scream into the void that a blog. A testament, a covenant that this moment existed, and was real, and had a value to no one else other than the person who wrote it.
There you go.
