Once My Looks Go, I've Got Nothing

I have to show you something. Look: Do you see that? That is an actual photo from within my living quarters. Some might say it represents a wall of obsolescence, a shrine to the preferred audio format of a bygone era, when physical copies of your music were a thing and mp3s took a full afternoon to download and were probably just virus traps. Others might say, "Wait...THREE different Kris Kross albums?" Yes, I have a lot of CD's. And, like proctologists, there are some great ones, and there are some bad ones. But then there are the ones that defy such simple categorization, and are not so much good or bad as they are baffling and inexplicable. You will find few greater examples of this phenomenon than those contained within what I have dubbed the Celebrity Wing of Joey Marsilio's EXXtreme CD Collection. Gaze upon these works, ye Mighty, and despair! Or at least like scratch your head or something. Hulk Hogan- Hulk Rules & "Macho Man" Randy Sav

Between my screeds about Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and my critically acclaimed novel , people sometimes forget that I am quite an accomplished comedy writer. I mean, it takes a certain level of talent to create public access television for literal years (let's not speculate on specifically what level that is). In addition to chortle-inducing articles for this blog and my hilarious off-off-Broadway musical comedy Oh, Bridget! , I once wrote a screenplay for a sitcom pilot that my father described as "kind of funny, in places." Why am I telling you all this? Well, you see, I have recently taken it upon myself to begin another intensive comedy proyecto , and I have come to realize in the course of working on it that I could get a twofer going and turn it into a lesson for you, my loyal and enraptured audience. A real master class in comedy, if you will. Allow me to explain. Comedy, much like open heart surgery, is quite difficult. But you know what they say: spl

As you may have noticed if you've been paying attention to my blog over the years, I have a, shall we say, staggered posting schedule. You may be tempted to chalk this up to laziness, but the narrative that I'm going with is that I'm not the type to just toss a few sentences about my lunch up online and call it a day. I want to make sure that every single one of my posts is fully realized and interesting, so I space them out and give each one a lot of thought. Quality over quantity, as it were. Trust me, I've made nearly $5 off my blog's ad revenue. Clearly I know what I'm doing. This sort of thoughtfulness goes into my social media posts as well. To wit, the subject of the day: my Instagram . Or more specifically, a set of circumstances surrounding an Instagram post that taught me a valuable lesson using one of the most effective educational tools of them all: crushing disappointment. Our story begins on a little avenue near my apartment that links a main st

         I spent about a decade or so of my formative years living in a mobile home park that was, at the time, known as Mobileparks West. Not to be confused with a trailer park (despite my parents frequently referring to it as such), Mobileparks West was a community of manufactured homes in which arson was strangely rampant. We eventually had to abandon our home there when we found that the interior of the walls was largely comprised of toxic mold.      Rather than dwell on some of the sordid elements of the park, such as time I happened upon an active crime scene containing an unfortunate gentleman who was fatally shot in the head on his front porch, let me ruminate on some positive memories from those halcyon, methy days. Specifically, a formative experience that occurred in 1991 at a magical place known as First Mart. First Mart, for those who are unaware (all of you) was a little convenience store at the mouth of the mobile home park, nestled in a tiny strip mall with a hand

I have spent the last few weeks tirelessly laboring on a thorough Yelp review for a local Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen. I feel my work is important enough that I would like to share it with my blog readers as well. However, since I know my readers are busy people, I've cut away all the fluff and excerpted the most salient material here. I apologize if some of you find this intensely disturbing. I should have known I was in for a rough time when I pull into the Popeye's parking lot. There are no parking spots within easy walking distance except for a single space directly in front of the restaurant. Now, normally this would be ideal, but the space is clearly marked "20 Minute Parking." So great, now I'm in a race against time! Asking me to divine the future and somehow predict how long I'm going to be at Popeye's is a fool's errand, so right from the beginning I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm going to have to rush my meal and watch

Christmas is a time of family, traditions, family traditions, and the looming specter of insurmountable debt. And nothing shrieks "tradition" like Christmas music, which has not evolved one bit in hundreds of years, give or take. In my family, one of our annual Yuletide traditions was listening to the album Christmas Comedy Classics , or Triple C if you're of the Guy Fieri school of thought regarding abbreviations. A collection of humorous holiday favorites, this compilation got innumerable spins on our CD player, which was a new technology at the time. And to be honest, I was never sure whether or not I liked it. I found some of the songs hilarious, some of them annoying, and most of them either depending on my mood. As such, I decided it was time to take a look back at this album now that I'm a Big Mature Adult and determine once and for all whether Christmas Comedy Classics is overflowing with Christmas cheer or merely a lump of coal being pounded into your ea

          After three Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark Power Rankings articles ( here , here and here ), as well as another post delving into some of his more obscure horror artwork, you can probably tell that the artist Stephen Gammell has a special, terrifying place in my heart. It therefore always brings me great joy when I find Gammell's artwork lurking in the most unexpected of places. Like, say, this book of Thanksgiving poetry. Koala not included.      When I ordered Thanksgiving Poems from Amazon, I had no idea what to expect. Which is funny, given that the title is pretty self-explanatory. This thing is, though...the poems aren't really what I'm here for. they're nice and all, but I'm far more interested in what Gammell is bringing to the Thanksgiving table. Would the book be chock full of grotesque imagery, like reanimated turkey corpses hunting for human giblets, or perhaps gravy bowls oozing bloody tendrils? Unsurprisingly, no. Actually, w