​Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company as the Weekly World News.  During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor, in an attempt to give the writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.")  It took me a while to get the hang of the paper but first the editor suggested I do the "Letter and Answer" format for their Dear Abby-style advice column, except that their "expert," Dottie, was a bitch.  I struggled with the format, kinda of recycling various jokes and bits I had over the years into a letter format with a snotty answer.

Naturally, when October comes, I do Halloween stuff, no matter what outlet I'm working on.  The Hobo letter is something that was evolving until it became a scene in my screenplay and novella, Halloweenies, about how hard it is to pick a costume.   I realize now, I wasn't really hitting the mark, to the point that the last letter about Elvis doesn't sound like mind at all.  I'm pretty certain the editor put that one in.  My material was getting absurd which is not what Dear Dotti was supposed to be about.  I mean, I do a follow-up to a bad driver letter, a MASH reference and Hallmark Holidays.  I'm surprised I made it to the end of the year on this column.

​​Weekly Humorist, a humor magazine I often submit to and occasionally get in, runs these Hashtag Games on Twitter (X), where they name a topic and we submit humorous responses.  These games play right into my gag reflex, so I always throw up something.  I've taken to setting my calendar to get online every Wednesday to "play" (and by "play" I mean submit content to their website for free--I like to think of it as pun bono work).   I always submit a bunch of them on X (Twitter) and some of them get selected for inclusion to their online site.

I can't help but notice that no matter the adject used in front of the game's theme, the entries all wind up devolving into simply things that are gross or disgusting.  Ask for scary, or bad, or wrong something and eventually the posts veer away from the usual definition.   Forget about defining what a "snack" even is here.  Anyway, I submitted by usual dozen or so entries and got 5 in, so that's good.  I tried to keep scary as in "Halloween scary," but I veered off to into gross and one of them got picked.  Then again, different things scare different people.  Check out the scary (or gross) fun at:

I went to our local CVS and checked out their Halloween aisle and came upon these.

Scary vegetables, right?  Except, here's the thing.  I co-wrote a film short for the late Beverly Bonner, a horror movie icon, back in 2020.  It was called "Steamed."  It was about a killer stalk of broccoli.  I wrote excessively about it here at Steamed The Movie.  It made the rounds at film festivals and was selected by over a dozen.  To make our project look a little more professional, I had a poster made up.

I took the poster and turned it into a t-shirt to present to Beverly for the Christmas after she premiered the short on Halloween at the NY Stand-Up comedy club.  For the production, she had a friend make up a broccoli puppet used for a couple of scenes.  There was a lot of broccoli imagery used for this.  What there wasn't was any merchandizing.   I mean, she was talking to a friend who did t-shirts, figuring to sell that at festivals or conventions, but she died before anything could come of it. When Beverly died, the momentum died with her.  She had assembled a production team but without her, there was no team.  So now, to see a broccoli monster on store shelf, it's upsetting.  

Naturally, I bought one.  

No one else who buys this will associate it with "Steamed,"  Except maybe now.  Maybe who ever reads this will.

​From 1999 to 2004-ish, I was one of the contributing writers for Garrison Keillor's renowned radio show "A Prairie Home Companion."  I learned a lot of things there, mostly how to spell 'prairie."  It was a solid gig and I'm proud of my work there.  But, like any other job, there were...things...

As Haloween approached, I was looking to create holiday-themed sketches.  Sometimes Keillor would paint these aural landscapes, beyond his Lake Woebegon monologues, where the entire company would get involved.  I maybe got too elaborate with these, thinking the cast could easily populate epic sketch.  They rarely did "epic" sketches.

I basically gathered up all my monster puns and half-baked monster ideas and a few Bugs Bunny jokes and strung them together with GK acting as our guide through a haunted house.  I also threw in a couple of topic jokes, like a GOP official outing a CIA agent in the press.

In the end, I combined this with a similar radio sketch I did the year before to create a version  of the bit that was produced over at Headfone.com, part of my Spooky Time Theater program.

Yeah, so the ads have started rolling out for the new Amazon movie, "Red One."  The movie where Santa goes missing and the folks at the North Pole have to hire a professional investigator to find him before Christmas.  Sound familiar?  It should, if you're on his blog.  It's the plot to my story, "Lost Claus."  I've talked about Lost Claus lots of time here.  From the Pee-Wee version that got me my first job in Hollywood (I love how that implies I've had other jobs since then), to my attempt to adapt it for Prairie Home Companion, making Garrison Keillor's character, Guy Noir, the lead.  Then there was the novelization, which I did to lock my story down into protectable form and the radio adaptation that got produced.

And my lead character, Nick Flebber, P.I., I've spun off into a slew of other tales, both prose and audio (You can check them out at The Nick Files Page).  

I've been grabbing tweets (I said tweets) from the movie's Twitter feed and re-tweeting them with plugs for my book, so we'll see how long I can continue that or if it's even effective.

Now, do I think they stole my idea?  Ideas aren't protectable.  I have to wait to see the movie now, like everyone else, to see if there are any similarities in execution of that idea.  Let's just say someone feels that certain people on the production team did possibly take a pitch and saw my script.  But even if the plots are totally different, I take a hit.  My screenplay isn't dead, but this is going to make it pointless for the time being, if it's a hit.  A bigger hit if it's a flop.

This happened to me once before; I had script knocking around called "Hitler's Script."  It was a story, inspired by true events, where a group of German filmmakers, during World War II, used the production of a Nazi propaganda film to escape Berlin. I started sending it around.  Then my manager at the time asked me if I had a seen the Tarantino film, "Inglourious Basterds"?  I hadn't.  So I ran out and rented a copy (is is how these were once done).  It was about World War II.  It involved Nazis.  It involved the German film industry.  And that was it.  But it was enough to derail my script.  I wasn't able to start showing it around again for a while.

This is not a linear career I attempted, I get that.  One job doesn't lead to another.  There are no "promotions."  It's all random.  And there are so many different ways things can not happen.  I'm the perpetual outsider without the moxie to work my way in.  And speed bumps like this just annoy me all the more.

​All I can say is, if you see the movie,   Buy the book!

​Back in the aughts, Cracked magazine was owned by the same company as the Weekly World News.  During the rocky final years of Cracked, our editor, in an attempt to give the writers a pay check, had us contribute articles to WWN ("the humor magazine that nobody knows is a humor magazine.")  It took me a while to get the hang of the paper but first the editor suggested I do the "Letter and Answer" format for their Dear Abby-style advice column, except that their "expert," Dottie, was a bitch.  I struggled with the format, kinda of recycling various jokes and bits I had over the years into a letter format with a snotty answer.

A lot of back-flashing here.  There are so many of my old jokes and premises used in this column it's a real snapshot of my brain back then.  Easier to have someone else do something and complain about it; childish vs. child-like; skateboard parks; witch wedding.  All things that had been knocking around, looking for a home.  I mean, there's even a joke about Charlie Brown reruns.  Arguing daughters was taken from real life, as was shopping lists.  Also I note the replies getting more testy, which was something I was reminded to do.

Oh, another thing.  The cheesecake shots were always laid over the Dear Dotti column.  I had nothing to do with that.

​Weekly Humorist, a humor magazine I often submit to and occasionally get in, runs these Hashtag Games on Twitter (X), where they name a topic and we submit humorous responses.  These games play right into my gag reflex, so I always throw up something.  I've taken to setting my calendar to get online every Wednesday to "play" (and by "play" I mean submit content to their website for free--I like to think of it as pun bono work).   I always submit a bunch of them on X (Twitter) and some of them get selected for inclusion to their online site.

Well, this was disappointing.  I submitted some pretty good jokes for this, out of a dozen or so, but only one made it to the website.  I basically went with the old-school horror movies but thought I had some solid entries.  Oh, well.

As autumn approaches, my mind goes all Halloweeny.  It's a favorite holiday of mine (as many of my posts attest to).  No one I know actually likes candy corn.  In fact, many people I know actively despise it.  Personally, I don't mind it, but it's not chocolate, so that's a big strike against it.  But it's part of the season.  And like so many other products, I'm sure the candy corn companies are trying to expand their markets.   

I borrowed one of PHC's favorite tropes and created the Candy Corn Council that has some plans for that.  I've used candy corn puns in my work in Cracked and The Staten Island Advance, so the concept for this bit was always bumping around in my head.  Marrying it to a PHC council seemed like a natural thing to do.  And I liked trying to make additional uses for candy corn kinda sound practical (British tea time?).  Also the fact of the ridiculousness of advertising candy corn as "fat-free" (which I've seen) makes it a perfect target.

I forget how the Christo gag came about, but I think the sketch was built around it, from wherever it developed.  I like it.  Christo had some of his draping cloth exhibits in the news around this time, but it probably doesn't make as much sense now, but google Christo to understand the fat joke.

Everyone talks about the weather but nobody doesn't anything about it...UNTIL NOW!  Yes, certain politicians spreading the idea that the government is controlling the weather.  Now to stop drought.  Not prevent blizzards.  But to stop people from voting.  Sure, these parts of the country always had hurricanes and tornados, but not like now, when it MATTERS!  And there are so many other things we should be doing.  Check out what on my latest piece in Weekly Humorist:

Running late from last week's game.  Still staying with the Halloween season by going for spooky spy movies.  Frankly, my spy movie experience doesn't got much beyond the James Bond movies.  So I went all in with that.  Running through all the titles, I hit the ones I could, going for a dozen.  I got 5 in.  Not necessarily my favorites (The Night of the Living Daylights was one I liked) but a solid showing.  Check it out: