Sardinia!

Several weekends ago, my wife and I thought it'd be a great idea to go to "Boulevardia," a two day outdoor music and beer festival (two of my favorite things wrapped together in one big package meant especially for me!) in downtown, Kansas City. With 70 musical acts on tap, I thought what could possibly be the downside?

Well... A) I'm not as young or fit as I used to be; and B) the weather! Oh, my God, the weather!

Leading up to the event, I kept my eye on the weather, tracking the long-term forecast with intense scrutiny. What I'd been on the lookout for was rain, tornadoes, the usual fun stuff of the Midwest, only maxed out by global warming. Things looked good! 85 degrees as the high for both days, no rain in sight. And then...the forecast heat kept inching up, bit by bit, day by day. Until it hit 101 degrees on Saturday. With the humidity really, really high as well.

Crap.

Alright. I pulled up my big boy britches and prepared. I imagined a musical montage (cue the theme to "Rocky"), while I tried on all of my old shorts, stashed at the bottom of a drawer beneath our bed. (Of course, I think we'd want to cut the part out of the montage where none of my shorts fit and I had to make a mad dash to Target for new ones. Hey, don't blame my weight gain! It's the damned humidity  making all of my clothes shrink.) 

So, armed with shorts, a hat, water bottles, sun screen and other life essentials (we looked like Hawaiian be-shirted campers), we headed for day one of Boulevardia. Day one wasn't bad. It started at 5:00 p.m., so most of the blistering sun had fallen and there was a nice breeze. But by the end of the night, when headliner Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats (one of the main reasons for our attendance) took the main stage, we found ourselves in the middle of a huge, jam-packed mob situation. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands and hundreds of fans were squished together like sardines in a can.

While Rateliff was awesome, several things impeded my enjoyment: 1) I was sweating like a stuck pig and feeling claustrophobic; 2) the ever present threat of Covid (this was our big "coming out" party; we had forgone masks completely for the first time in a while); and 3) I kept thinking "wouldn't this be an ideal place for a mass shooting?" 

Which is sad, really, that that's what was going through my mind. I kept imagining ways to smuggle a gun into the event, which wouldn't have been tough at all, instead of just letting go and enjoying the concert. A very depressing current state of affairs in which we live.

But it wasn't all bad. Where else could you see "Saxsquatch," some guy who puts on a Bigfoot costume and plays the saxophone, covering a lotta maudlin hits of the '70's and '80's? (How in the world he managed not to pass out in that heat, in that costume, was beyond me. Unless...could it be? Naw. But, wait...maybe, just maybe...he was a REAL BIGFOOT!)

We survived the first day, no great shakes. But day two was an entirely different affair. It started out hot at 11:00 A.M. and just got blazingly worse. In my youth, my friends and I went to these festivals non-stop and the heat and humidity never bothered us. Here, it was a case of survival where we constantly sought out shade. We grew clever and pulled chairs into little rock islands with tree coverage. I wet down a wash cloth and put it on top of my head beneath my hat, no matter how dumb I looked. We ended up at various musical stages, at this point dictated by the amount of shade coverage offered.

When my wife moved onto the Maker's alley, I was near collapse. Like an old fat man, I found a tree and plopped down beneath it,  chigger bites preferable over heat stroke.

All around me young people laughed, gathered, drank, stood out in the sunshine. You know, being annoying. Young people suck! Get offa my lawn!

Once my wife returned, I told her I'd had enough. In small increments, we made our way out of there, stopping beneath trees, finding abandoned seats, naturally pausing for beer, until we finally landed in God-made, natural air conditioning.

The moral of the story? Just wait until you get old, damn whippersnapper!

Hey, now, don't open the doors to the ol' folks home for me quite yet, but floundering stand-up comedian Charlie Broadmoor is beginning to feel the weight of his mortality weighing on him. Things don't get any better when he inadvertently heckles a demon during one of his nightclub gigs. Now, he really feels that ol' life time clock ticking. Read the Amazing True Story in my book, Demon with a Comb-Over, available right here, right now! 

House Under Siege!

Loud explosions are bursting outside. Bombs land on the roof that shake the interior, hurting my teeth fillings. My house is falling apart, debris landing in the yard. Men are shouting outside, overhead, some of them yelling at me in a language I don't understand. And I sit inside my house with no electricity, cowering in fear.

Nope, I'm not in the war-torn Ukraine. Instead, war has been declared on my house, my land, in a puny little suburb of Kansas City in Nowhere, U.S.A!

Now that I've vented in my finest drama queen fashion, I suppose a few explanations are in order (although, I gotta say, it's much more fun being a drama queen).

Everything happens at once. It started with the tree in our backyard splitting off a huge branch and then crunching up our fence. I already told you about my woes with the filthy rich arborist robbing us blind, so I won't go into that again. But with all the torrential downfalls of rain we've been suffering (shut up, Global Warning deniers!), recently we discovered a leak in the house. Which lead to an inspection of our roof. Which lead to a jaw-dropping estimate to replace the roof, especially since "the last guys that put on your roof didn't do it right. They just done slapped the new roof on top of the old wooden roof. Which is illegal now."

Crikey! "Illegal?" Are the roofing police coming for us? How're we supposed to keep up with what's legal and illegal in roofs? Between shootings and Covid, these days it's hard enough trying to stay alive without worrying about roofs!

So, we decided to take the deep, ever-so-deep plunge into our credit card, and get a new roof. Because we didn't want to end up in roofing jail.

Now, of course, with a faulty roof (which insurance refused to pay for, par for the course), comes the inevitable wood rot caused by our friend, Nature. We also got an estimate for that. Once my wife managed to get me up off the floor, we decided to get that tended to as well. Ka-chinggggg!

In keeping with the unkind and nasty Fates' sense of mean-spirited humor, our refrigerator and dishwasher decided to die at the same time. Ha ha. It is to laugh! Joie de vivre!

Here's the kicker:  every stinking one of these guys decided to do it all at the same time. Either due to weather or again, the nefarious Fates giggling over their pawns in the game of Life, everything coalesced at once.

But wait! There's more! The day before Hell reigned down on our (used to be) quiet and (not quite so) humble abode, the doorbell rings.

I hold back our two dogs, "Rowdy" and "Rumpus," and finally get outside to talk to some Orange shirted city employee.

"Hey there, Mr. America," he says, "we're from the city works department and we're working on a beautification project. We're going to fix the curb at the end of your driveway starting tomorrow. Should take about a week."

"Yow!" I say. "Um, can you postpone your beautification a bit?" I listed everything happening. 

He tells me, "sure we'll start on another house down the street."

The next morning, I'm awakened by loud trucks, back-up whistles, horn honks, yelling men, screams, total chaos. Sure enough, the street crew's going to work. I toss on some jeans, run outside flailing my arms, one of the dogs hot on my heels.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold up, guys! You're not going to start on the driveway today, are you?"

Dumb question because one of the eight member team is holding a jackhammer up above the street. The rest of the guys are looking at me quizzically, either because they don't speak English or I appear insane in my "Who farted?" T-shirt. You'd kinda think that both of our cars being in the driveway may've been a tip-off clue that they shouldn't start yet, or at least ring the doorbell, but no, that's not how the street crew rolls.

One guy finally speaks up. "Right. You're having tree work done later today, so we're supposed to start on your driveway."

"No, no, no, nyet, nada, nunca, noooooooo! The guy yesterday said you'd start down the street."

"Right. We're just going to cut the street apart."

Clearly, what we had here was a failure to communicate. "But...but...we need to get our cars out of the driveway later."

Blink. Blinkety-blink-blink. "Right," says Foreman Clueless. "We're just gonna cut the street."

Giving up, I go inside, keeping an eye out on what they're doing. Later when it came time for me to leave, the eight all-stars grumbled and groused because they had to move while I parked both cars in the street.

And these guys stretched out a simple one day job into nine days of miserable dislocation. Every morning, they'd work about 45 minutes before adjourning for Happy Hour. Clearly they were getting paid by the day, not by the hour.

Which made us very, very popular with the neighbors. Since we couldn't park in our driveway, that took up two street spots. Factor in a thousand large and larger street crew vehicles , a ginormous tree devouring monster truck, various delivery vehicles, multiple roofers' autos along with massive supplies being dumped into our poor abused yard, you couldn't even drive through the street, let alone park on it. As I said, our neighbors just love us!

That's just the chaos outside. Inside was just as bad. The electricity went down a couple of times. I'm kinda a modern guy. Without electricity, there's not a lotta fun to be had. I suppose I could've cut my toenails by candlelight, but that's about four minutes shot.

Also, I walk around the house in my underwear in the mornings, part of my routine. Kinda hard to do when there are people climbing all over your roof, up the side of the house, peering into windows, and knocking at the door.

Once, I was getting dressed upstairs after my shower and I see some guy knocking at the small window trying to get my attention. Quickly, I pull on pants and open the window. 

In a surreal exchange, he says, "Hi. We're here to do wood rot repair."

Huh. Honestly, I would've thought the front door may've been a better introductory point, but what do I know?

And I never thought that wood rot repair would be so noisy. Imagine a thousand dental drills amplified and held up to your ear.

Finally, the various crews wrapped up and a cease-fire was called. With the white flag of surrender waved, peace once again dropped over our abode like quiet, ever so blissfully quiet, falling snow.

Until the next calamity, natch. And don't let the old saying, "everything happens in threes" fool you. It's more like "everything happens in nines."

And, hey! While on the topic of having a very disruptive life, meet Richard "Tex" McKenna. Between bullies (peers and teachers both) and burgeoning love, he's having a hard time in high school, but when you consider he's just found out he's a witch, things really get screwy. Not to mention a mysterious serial killer who's offing various bullies. This and so much more can be found in Tex, the Witch Boy, my very first novel, recently resurrected from the dead by The Wild Rose Press. (My wife still thinks it's her favorite book of mine.)

Stop Pluralizing "Freedom!"

Whenever I hear somebody ranting about "I gotta have muh freedoms," my eyes just glaze over. Better that than confronting them over their idiotic misunderstanding of the term "freedom," and risk getting shot.

Drives me up a wall. But I may have to start correcting these numbskulls.

Where did this bastardization pluralization originate? I, your couch- roving reporter, have the answer! So, jump into the Way-back Machine with me, and let's travel to the immediate aftermath of...

September 11, 2001. (I know, I know, I hear you grousing and saying, "This is NOT going to be funny and I don't want to read about it." To which I respond, "Tough. We'll be back to stupid stuff next week.")

In a speech responding to the terrorists responsible for September 11th, then President George W. Bush said, "They hate us for our freedoms!"

Having suffered through the dark reign of George W. (although, honestly, compared to what's passing for politicians these days, I'd gladly go back to G. Dubs. Come back, George, all is forgiven!), I'm pretty sure that he just screwed the speech up. Wouldn't have been the first (or thousandth) time. But since then, people started embracing the nonsense word "freedoms." Especially nowadays. (Boooo! On second thought, G-Dubs, stay retired.)

Here's the deal, yo: "rights" are plural, always have been. Individual rights form the basis--the foundation--of what our freedom is supposed to be. Freedom is an all-encompassing term that includes all rights. Thus, class...there is only one "freedom." And let's keep it that way.

That's the end of the scholarly part of today's lecture. Now comes for some spit-balling, for I believe I know why people these days want to have more than one "free-dumbs."

People want to cherry-pick their "free-dumbs." These days it's groovy to say, "I gots to have my free-dumbs to shoot somebody! Where's muh gun?" 

Of course, at the advent of Covid vaccination, a new rallying cry for free-dumbs was born: "I gots to have my free-dumbs to reject the vaccine and go out and infect people!"

But since we're now dealing with multiple "freedoms" instead of just the singular "freedom," people, politicians, and courts are picking which ones suit their needs as if they're going down the cafeteria line. Even the once highly regarded Supreme Court is getting into the "free-dumbs" act: they despise abortion, gay rights, and don't care that the earth burns from global warning, yet they're just crazy for guns. 

Naturally, the freedom of women choosing what to do with their own bodies is overlooked, instead being determined by a buncha old, white, rich men, who are kowtowing to the lowest common denominator and freaky fanatics and zealots.

So much for "freedoms." But you see what I mean, right? Cherry-picking, hence the new cool kids made-up term, "freedoms." Parsing out individual "freedoms" is a sure sign of the end of the all-encompassing freedom.

But if you take it one logical step further... The all-too-often used "free-dumbs" I mentioned above clearly intrude upon the freedom of others. How free are you when you're shot by a gun-loving psycho? Or how does freedom factor into when a Covid carrier/anti-vaxxer goes out and infects everyone in their path? And the day women's rights were set back to the dark ages is the biggest blow to true freedom yet.

So, I implore you people to help me stop the highly illegal use of the nonsense word "freedoms." The next time you hear Joe America yelling about his "free-dumbs" to some poor harangued clerk at a convenience store, step up, and say, "You, sir, are out of order for abusing the English language and misunderstanding the concept of our freedom and rights. Therefore, I'm placing you under citizen's arrest for being a simpleton nincompoop."

Go on and do it! I'll be waiting here to find out the results...

So, if you think you've lost your "free-dumbs," check out poor Shawn Biltmore. He's a cog in a merciless, inhuman, Big Biz corporation who has no say in what he does or even thinks. But he loses even more freedom once he gets bitten by a werewolf at a corporate retreat. It's the ultimate loss of freedom in Corporate Wolf, a darkly satirical horror tale for today.

 

Resting Therapy Face

Apparently I suffer from Resting Therapy Face. It's not a cool syndrome, something that gives you bragging rights. I never asked for it. But, alas, I have it. People always want to unload their life's story on me. As a writer, I used to welcome it, lots of ammo for fodder. But it's grown tiresome, almost as tiresome as women continually mistaking me for George Clooney.

First a little background before I unveil the drama: Seven months ago we decided to Christmas gift my daughter with a garage door. We went through Lowe's, a mammoth big box hardware store chain (I'm not changing the name, because...well, because they suck!). The pushy salesman said it would take a couple months. No problem, we thought, Christmas will come late. Months and months go by. Finally, we get a call from a guy who wants to come out and take measurements. He does. Many, many more moons go by. My wife gets fed up and calls Lowe's. After the typical Lowe's phone run-around, a sales person says, "Oh, yes, your door has been made and is sitting here now. We just need to schedule an installation." Fast forward another couple of months without word. This time the clerk says, "Oh. Well... Yeah, your garage door hasn't been made yet, because we can't find anyone to go out and do a lead test." Soooooo many crickets and not enough curse words. At long last, we told Lowe's to eat it and canned the order. (A side note to this very long side note: Soon after this trauma, we saw a truck tooling around town with the name, "Same Day Garage Door Service." I said, "Huh. And here we were hoping for same year service.")

What does this have to do with my horrific Resting Therapy Face illness? Not a damn thing! But I had to vent.

Back on point... So we find Jimmy with "We Be Pros Garage Door." I like Jimmy. He's kinda hyper, gung-ho, wants to do a good job, is a nice guy, and it didn't take him six months to come out. We start talking about smoking and how he wants to quit but is afraid he'll balloon up in weight. We compare past divorces. Soon, Jimmy lets me know that he's biologically incapable of having children (adoption is a possibility) and that he only cheated on a girlfriend once. Furthermore, Jimmy doesn't believe in prescription drugs, doesn't drink alcohol, and the only diet drink he tolerates is Diet Mountain Dew. As we wound down our intensely personal pow-wow/garage door installation, he dropped his biggest bombshell on me yet: he'd just found out today his girlfriend was cheating on him. I thought, huh, and you're out here installing a garage door? I told him as much.

"Hey, the show must go on," he says and does a little dance step. 

Bravo, I think. I would've been curled up in a fetal position, mewing like a drowning kitten, and bemoaning my sad existence. Definitely not installing a garage door.

"Maybe she's not cheating on you, Jimmy," I say, trying to keep hope alive, but not holding out much hope.

"No, look..." He held his phone up for me to see. "I've been talking to the guy all day, pretending to be her."

So, he finally finished our garage door job. His next stop? Going home to confront his cheating girlfriend.

Upon a firm, departing handshake, I say, "Jimmy, I don't know what you're expecting, but I hope you get it."

He says, "The truth. I just want truth."

Wow. My Resting Therapy Face was working overtime that day. It happens quite a bit, actually. Just last week Joe, the roofer, came over to collect his check. Within three minutes, he told me his oldest daughter had blown up two cars and was working on her third. He also let me know where his political affiliations lay and that he was friends with his work crew and even helped a couple get their green cards.

Maybe I just have a trustworthy face. Or perhaps I have a permanently sorrowful appearance and people want to cheer me up by telling me their problems are much worse than mine. I dunno. But, listen up, people...cut it out!

Post Jimmy story for those curious amongst you: Turns out Jimmy didn't bring along a remote for the garage door so he had to return. Which meant I had to travel back to my daughter's small town to lock up her hell-hounds and let Jimmy in. AND I got to find out how Jimmy's saga turned out. He said that he was letting his ex-girlfriend stay with him until she found a place of her own because he didn't want to just kick her to the curb. Man. What a guy! I don't know how many guys would be that kind in a similar situation.

Post-post Jimmy story: My daughter just called. The garage door doesn't lock. And the remote quit working. I wonder if Jimmy planned it this way: maybe he has another new life drama he wants to unspool on me. My Resting Therapy Face is back on the job! To be continued!

Speaking of long faces, Shawn Biltmore has one. He's got women problems, work issues, and drinks waaaaay too much. But his face REALLY gets long when he turns into a werewolf. Read all about it in Corporate Wolf!

 

 

I Had a...Nightmare of Nannies!

I'm super stoked to announce the republication of the third Zach and Zora comedic mystery series, Nightmare of Nannies from the fine, fine folks at Crossroad Press.

Why am I super stoked? Because these books are actually tons of fun to write. They make me giggle like my inner eight year old. I hope they might entertain a few of you, too.

In fact these books are so dad-gum outrageous, they've been banned in Florida for being much too woke and promoting Critical Male Entertainment Dancer Theory.

 Maybe I better give a little more background...

Juggling four kids while working as a detective is tough enough. Zora LeFevre sure didn’t need her nanny dying first day on the job. Especially when it looks like murder and something’s fishy about her nanny supplier.

Meanwhile, a serial killer van’s chasing her dimwit stripper (but don't call him that! He prefers "male entertainment dancer") brother, Zach, and his tear-away pants have been stolen. A mariachi band is his only hope for survival. Worse, Zach’s head-over-heels, willing to learn country line-dancing, in love.

Nannies are dangerous, no one is as they seem, bullets are flying, and it’s another uproariously bad day for Zach and Zora.

Okay, explosive hyperbole blurb over!

(Wait...I lied. I'm not done hyping yet...) 

One reviewer compared Zack and Zora to Nick and Nora from the old Thin Man movies. Someone said the books read like screwball comedies from the '30's. The best compliment I got was someone called it "hilariously un-p.c!" Yeah!

I also try to top load the books with nutty characters. Besides Zach and Zora (and her screaming, out-of-control four kids), we've got the singing police detective, the fried hippy parents, more zany nannies than you can shake a stick at, and murder suspects out the wahzoo.

And if you think the books sound a little too silly...I do try and include a creditable murder mystery each time as well. Nannies may be my favorite in the series so far as I actually try to plug in a little character development. Perhaps everyone's favorite male stripper (erm, sorry...male entertainment dancer), Zach, is growing up a bit.  Nahhhhh.

Anyway, read Nightmare of Nannies and see what all the fuss is about (in my head)! Pick up the first books, Bad Day in a Banana Hammock and Murder by Massage and find out why they're so critically acclaimed (by my cousin)!

(Psst...I'm back to work on the fourth Zach and Zora book, Massacre of Mustaches, coming soon to finer interwebs booksellers near your fingertips!)

End of shameless plug! Carry on...