Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

The generally accepted rule of trilogies is that the third installment is almost inevitably the weakest. This makes sense: the first installment is bursting with new creativity, the second is able to refine things and boost them to new heights, and by the time part three rolls around, some degree of repetition sets in, and the excitements tends to wear off. Still, there are some advantages to being the third in a series: the groundwork has been laid, there is a certain comfort in the series' familiarity, and there is still plenty of room for improvement and exploration. And so, in this vein, we have Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones . It's definitely the weakest of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series (for reference, see my POWER RANKINGS of the first and second books in the series), but it's still wholly enjoyable. There are some uninspiring elements, to be sure, but the good parts more than make up for it. It's Return of the Jedi . And there&

There was a time when all I wanted to do was write for television. Not local access television (I checked that off the list long ago, and wrote a four part series of articles on this very blog about it), but actual commercial television. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember-I have crudely illustrated stories about Godzilla from when I was eight years old to prove it-and being able to create something that would air nationwide, and having a budget with which to produce this, was an extremely tantalizing prospect. I even went so far as to write an official “Steel & Marsilio” pilot in case I managed to make some inroads with Comedy Central or some such thing. In order to progress with this goal, I moved to Los Angeles, one of the great epicenters of television production. This move was ill-fated from the beginning. I had been unemployed for a few months before I moved, and assumed I would be able to find a job in L.A. before my money ran out. Not a television jo