Re-Reader

Daily writing prompt
What book could you read over and over again?
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I could give you a list for this prompt. A long list. I’m not one of those folks who reads a book once then never returns to it. I am a regular re-reader. I don’t re-read everything, but there have been a lot of books that I’ve read multiple times.

Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is probably the big one. Every time he added a book to the series I would re-read all of the previous books in preparation. After he finished the seventh and “final” book of the series I went back and tore through the whole thing again. I may have actually done that 2-3 times. The only book I haven’t re-read is the one he wrote after he finished. The eighth book in the seven book series. I’ll get to it some day.

The Harry Potter series has been re-read a bunch of times. The Lord of the Rings has too. All sorts of Clive Barker and Stephen King books have had many reads. When it comes to scary, those two are just the best. Just within the last couple of weeks I’ve re-read a book. I picked up an audiobook copy of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments which is a sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale. Before I started digging into it I went back and re-read The Handmaid’s Tale so that I could be clear on the differences between the book and the Hulu series (even though the second book is sort of more a sequel to the show than the book… sort of).

To sum up, there have been so many books that I have re-read over the years that I can’t even remember them all. There have been some books that I have read through five or six times, or maybe even more. Why not? A good movie is re-watchable, right? Why not a good book? There’s always more to dig in to. Always.

Two Songs

To make up for not having a band practice today, I mixed the two songs that I had that were ready to mix. Both are for volume seven of The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project, aka Quarantine Tunes.

I pretty happy with this one:

I’m not very happy with this one:

I think I have two more songs to work on for volume seven, then it’s on to volume eight. I’ve actually already started one song for volume eight… so are volume seven and eight really just one big double sized volume? I don’t know, I am making up the rules for this stupid thing as I go.

Twitter Alternatives Update

I haven’t tried to embed a post from one of the twitter alternatives I’ve been dicking around with for the last few months. Mastodon, Bluesky, or Threads. Threads is more or less winning the race but I haven’t given up on the other two yet. I wonder if the ability to embed posts into wordpress.com will be the deciding factor? Probably not.

Here’s one from Threads:

https://www.threads.net/@reallytallredhead/post/C5eDKRLvoB7

Here’s one from Bluesky:

https://staging.bsky.app/profile/robj1971.bsky.social/post/3kpkq7324jq2z

Here’s one from Mastodon:

Hey! We have a winner! One out of three ain’t bad, even if it does look like utter and complete shit.

Wait Until Next Week

The plan was to start The Great New Singer Process today with a band practice with just the three of us so we could start rehearsing some of the songs we’re going to ask auditioning singers to try out with.

Nope. We have a one week delay. Mike the Bass Player has something going on at home that he needs to take care of, so we will meet at his house seven days from now and kick off the journey then.

This is bad news because we were all looking forward to it, but for me personally it is also good news because holy crap do I need to practice.

Seven days from now. My calendar is marked. Bring it on.

What a Character

Daily writing prompt
If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?
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I’ve read so many books in my life. Like, tons of them. I need to pick just one character? Not likely. I’ve read so many books that I can’t even think of single, specific characters. Huh. This is a tough one.

Most of the lead characters that come to mind are normal every day folks who find themselves faced with a supernatural something or someone (I have read a lot of horror and science fiction). Being one of those heroes wouldn’t be interesting, but being the villain might… although I don’t want to be the bad guy.

I’ve read a few Star Wars and Star Trek novels in the past. I could pick Luke Skywalker or Captain Kirk. I could pick Harry Potter too but his young life has been a bit on the crappy side so I’ll pass on him. I could stay in the Potterverse and pick Ron Weasley. I won’t though. If you take out the magic you’re left with a red head who lacks self confidence which is pretty much me as a teenager already so… pass.

The one that keeps coming back to me is Gentle from Clive Barker’s novel Imajica. He was a super talented magic user type guy. He was a complete screw up in life, but could be redeemable. There is a bit of backstory that (Spoiler Alert – Skip to the next paragraph to avoid a potential spoiler) includes being a blood relative to a psychotic thing that thought it was… maybe… ya know… god. Yeah, I’ll pass on that baggage.

Okay, let’s go with Luke Skywalker. That way I could be a Jedi and any time I walk toward a super market’s automatic doors everyone would have to wonder if they opened because I hit the doors’ sensor, or did they open because I used The Force.

ADDENDUM: I just reread the question. I totally missed the part about “book or film” and only read books. Oh well. The answer is the same either way.

Steve Martin

My wife and I just finished the Steve Martin documentary on AppleTV+.

Go watch it. Just do it. I don’t care if you’re a fan or not. The movie (two movies, actually) is sad and heartwarming and funny and wonderful and I loved it and my wife loved it and you’ll probably love it too, assuming you have a heart and a soul and a brain.

Just go watch it. Go on. Stop screwing around. Watch the friggin’ movie.

Good.