Short Story: Under The Angelic Glow Of Dusk

“The Time has been catching us off guard,” she said to me and I, still reeling from the wind and the parties, only laughed at her notion and called her mind a good hangover waiting to happen.

She did not like my comments (typical) and shunned me for the first two days of our assignment. This probably wouldn’t have bothered me so much if we weren’t supposed to be wife and husband in this little life moment. On Friday, I got sick of her little games and in a dark corner in a dark moment after breakfast (which consisted of coffee or tea (decaffeinated), corn flakes (dry), and milk (cold).) I confronted her about the so-called importance of our assignment.

As she angrily argued back at me her wings rustled under her silly white dress. She hated me.

I laughed at that and reminded her small mind that she wasn’t capable of hate. Her and her little angels and their white hair and white eyes and white gleaming teeth never hate- Even those easy to. She then said it may not be hate but it was the closest she had felt to it. I had to laugh at her honesty, even though just the sound of her voice annoyed me.

She then stated that she was very sure she hated the sound of my laughter (it is a dark loud, booming laugh that echoes with screams of those inside) and then went and compared it to angry bells banging against the side of her ears. All the noises of lost times.

We had two days and she was going to use them. “For what?” I asked comically (I already knew the answer).

“To spread a little happiness,” she said….

…So Hope spent her days sprinkling the hollows of the Retirement Community with her magical daydreams, moonbeams and silly wishes of joy. I, I being of knowledge and reality and logic pure, wallowed in the dark corners talking with the spiders under my robes. Continue reading

Neil Diamond’s “A Cherry Cherry Christmas” is the Worst Christmas Song Ever! A Holiday Musical Rant.

It Even he doesn't look happy with the result...takes a lot to write a worse song than “Christmas Shoes.”

You could almost see a contest being created around the Herculean task. The title of the contest could relate to old, smelly sneakers or something.

Yet, in 2009 Neil Diamond would have won the coveted holey shoe without any trouble at all with his “A Cherry Cherry Christmas.” (You see how I did that? Because we are talking about the holidays and I said “holey” instead of holy?… Oh, nevermind.)

How did I escape this atrocity to the holidays for the last few years?

It might be my first proof of Christmas angels. (And not the little ones who are all alone with no toys to play with except a shoebox… Wow, I hate that children’s book; most depressing vision of the afterlife ever.) See, I love the holiday season and one of my little embarrassing quirks is each year I give the local radio stations a chance to prove to me that there is still the possibility of good Christmas music being made. Usually, they don’t succeed…

Actually, sadly, I can’t think of the last time they have convinced me that anyone should consider making a holiday CD at all again! Continue reading

Episode Seven: Time Out Of Mind

Episode 7 of

Time Out Of Mind,

The Sequel to

The Dante Experience

“In the Garden of Eden”

OPENING CREDITS

Scene 1

SOUND: Of Heaven.

MICHAEL: The trick is not to panic.

REPAIR ANGEL: You’ve been saying that for twenty minutes.

MICHAEL: Just remember that, your great glorious one. Remember that. Here you might need this brown paper bag. I find breathing into it can be soothing. Are you ready? The three remaining dragons have arrived in the Garden of Eden and they have found Adam and Eve.

REPAIR ANGEL: This is exciting stuff! Continue reading

Episode Five: Time Out Of Mind

Episode 5 of

Time Out Of Mind,

the sequel to

The Dante Experience

“A Night at the Theater”

OPENING CREDITS

Scene 1

SOUND: Of Heaven.

MICHAEL: Hello, your holiness, I have returned. I’m sorry about all that and my date. I’m so red. I mean, if angels could blush I would be red, not red like a devil or anything. Red just doesn’t work for me. Tried dressing up as a devil once for Halloween. I had this little tail and pitchfork and I was poking people with it and you probably don’t want to hear about that. Anyway, I brought some paradise cleaner that should help the mess and… Ok, I’ll just put it here.

SOUND: Putting cleaning supplies down.

MICHAEL: Ok, let me boot up my computer and the surveillance equipment and the video players and see what I have missed. Let’s see… Well, at least some good news since we know that one of the dragons is in Camelot. Of course, you can’t help but wonder what the other dragons have gone and what they are planning and… Do you wonder things like that? I mean… Nevermind. So the group is in the right spot. The group, now including Benjamin Franklin, are in the court of King Arthur. Our team of General Joseph, Jenkins and Dante are… Hmmm… Oh, here they are.

SOUND: Computer Beep.

MICHAEL: They have escaped France after having their heads chopped off and have been transported by the Angel Transportation League to a small village near Camelot. Continue reading

Joss Whedon: Our Outsider Makes Good

I became a fan of Joss Whedon around the sixth season of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. I’m sure that honest admission at the start might already turn off some readers, but let me add that after getting hooked I bought all of the boxsets of the other seasons and used them to help draw in others, while using all of my skills at peer pressure and bribery (and sometimes even blackmail).

I was living in LA at the time, studying writing at the University of Southern California, and I was startled by the news story that his show was able to jump stations. Now, I remembered the movie and couldn’t believe that this was the same thing we were talking about. That idea? Really? All I remembered about the film was that it starred PeeWee Herman. Yet, the idea, and the accomplishment of such a TV production feat impressed me and led to me turning on the show and giving it a shot.

That old blind Scott feels like a very different person from the Scott writing this. I want to shake my head in annoyance at him, throw something at him or even bitch slap him. In the least, there should be some ridicule and taunts. Continue reading

Episode 6 of The Dante Experience

It is friday and Hell is calling you for episode 6 of The Dante Experience. Take the call, this is one of my favorite episodes in the series. Here is the link:

You can find links to the previous episodes (as well as read about the writing of the series) via the links on the Dante 3 page (top of the page, right up there^). And remember, you can find the series on amazon (here) or by contacting the production company that made it, Mind’s Ear Audio Productions.

Here is the next chapter in the writing of the series:

Moving Right Along

Frankly, I moved on.

While others may have left the Midwest Radio Theater Workshop that year inspired to make their own radio dramas, I left feeling like I had just finished a funeral and everyone else didn’t know the host was a corpse. The fact that a few years later the MRTW disbanded because of internal conflict didn’t surprise me. There was definitely a power struggle among their different heads, and each seemed to have their own vision of what radio drama can be used for. Continue reading

Episode Four of The Dante Experience

Here is the link to Episode 4 of The Dante Experience.

The three previous episodes, of course, can be found via the links on the The Dante 3 page above.

Writing The Dante Experience

It was 1997 and I was in the MA program in English Literature at Michigan State University. My dream, at the time, was to become a professor in literature, getting my MA and then moving on to my Ph.D. Really, I wanted to teach back at my alma mater, Aquinas College (a dream I would succeed at for one semester a decade later), and I saw this as the straightest path to that goal.

Honestly, while I would be spending my days reading the work of other authors and writing reports, the creative side of my brain was starving…. So that brings us up to winter break and I am still living in my dormitory. I had a job working at a bank during the day and I really couldn’t leave Lansing. Which means I was living in something equivalent to a haunted house. I would walk down the hallways of the dorm and hear strange noises in the distance, not sure if it was another soul (living or not), or something more dire. Continue reading