I have arrived in South Korea safe and sound, and I am once again able to update the site. The regular features, both extant and planned, will resume shortly. Expect a new Weirdo Cinema Chronicles article on Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie next week some time. Expect new Webjunk Roundups whenever the hell I have adequate time to idly surf the web and find interesting websites that I can shoehorn awkwardly into a theme. Expect a yet-to-be-named series of articles on gender-inequity within nerd-culture… some day. Blah blah blah. And so on and so forth.
South Korea, and what every expat writer needs here:
Last year, I found that, in addition to the boring stuff like clothes and comforting homey apartment decor, there were at least two things that every writer in Korea absolutely needed.
- A coffee shop he or she can stick a flag in and call their own.
- A bar to which he or she can do more or less the same thing.
I have claimed my coffee shop. It’s called Coffee Soul, and it’s staffed by friendly people who give me free refills and ask if I will dedicate my book to them (har har). It’s where I’m sitting now. The young barrista who just brought me my refill tells me that the shop just opened up earlier this year. So the two of us, myself and Coffee Soul, are both Daegu newborns. That sits poetically with me.
Still need to find that bar, though…
The Infamous Podcast – a sneak-peek:
As I edit audio for the first episode of my new podcast (entitled, shock of shocks, wonder of wonders, “This Should Mean Something”), I’ve gotten into the habit of renaming clips in order to better track them down later in the process. Here’s the proposed format of each episode:
- Act 1: A This American Life / Radiolab -style audio-documentary about whatever the hell I happen to have put my foot in.
- Act 2: An interview with a person I admire, whether professionally or personally or both, as candid as I can manage.
The inaugural episode will be structured like so:
- Act 1: “Goodbye Dayton” – I bid a fond farewell to my hometown, knowing that as I leave I may never permanently return.
- Act 2: An interview with four of my favorite people, Jerry Gordon, Maurice Broaddus (both of Dark Faith), Jason Sizemore (publisher, Apex Book Company), and Michael West (Cinema of Shadows, the forthcoming Poseidon’s Children).
To tantalize you (and to strike fear into the hearts of my interviewees), here are some of the names of the clips I’ve been labeling as I listen to the nearly three hours of footage recorded at the Indiana Horror Writer’s retreat:
- Maurice – purposefully difficult to pigeonhole?
- Jerry is a Klingon
- I feel that my mental illness has sabotaged career ops (that one relates to me, to be fair)
- Maurice – “I ain’t scared of you and your podcast”
- A lot of writers spout on about themselves.
- Jerry’s first MoCon booze run.
- Self-hatred, you are rejecting ME.
If that don’t whet your whistle, you have no whistle to whet.
