The bunker is filled with the tantalizing aroma of slow cooker pork roast and root vegetable as I compose this update. I hope it finds you where you want and need to be, whether it’s with family, with friends, or hiding out in a dark room eating cold pizza and watching Marx Brothers movies. We are somewhat forced by massive, indifferent corporate pressures, to consume, to overspend, to be influenced, and to celebrate the holidays in way that’s still quite unrealistic for 98% of the population. As grown-ups, you know that you can always opt out entirely, and you don’t even owe anyone an explanation as to why. They will still ask, but most of them won’t push.
You can alternately make what you will of the holiday season, and own it. Krampus costume? Festivus pole? A Griswaldian amount of Christmas lights? Pot brownies and a Twilight Zone marathon? No, it’s not a Norman Rockwell Christmas, but that never existed, either. So figure out what would bring you joy, and seek it out. Make it your armor this year, and don’t let anyone tell you that you’re doing it wrong. Least of all, the Hallmark channel and every single cell phone company on the planet.
Giving Thanks
Sometimes this comes off as performative and self-congratulatory; I’ve not done one of these in years, to be frank. The things and the people I was thankful for were too big, too complex to try and boil down into a tweet.
I’m doing a quick list this year because I think we need a little counter programming in the world—there’s too much happening at the Fear and Dread level, and I get wanting to stay plugged in and aware of it all, but you gotta take a break now and again, to reset and recharge, if nothing else. Hopefully, when you do look up from the Doomscroll you’ll see something—I don’t know what—that gives you a moment of joy, of peace, of pause, of perspective, that allows you to lift the needle on the long playing record and grab a little silence.
This is for all of you who are reading the newsletter, or commenting on Facebook, or sending me weird links in an instant message. I’m so glad you’re here, and I’m thankful for the chance to communicate with you regularly. Y’all all make my day. Sometimes, I seek out my Facebook feed to see what Chris, or Larry, or Billy, or Nathan, or Aaron, or Joseph, or any of my other peeps are posting, sharing, and talking about. I am rarely disappointed.
Those of you who have supported my various writing endeavors over the years (and some of you have been around for nearly 25 years—or more!), whether it was zines, comics, short fiction, movie reviews in the newspaper, old time radio plays, award-winning biographies, of some of all of it, my God, “thank you” hardly seems enough. After all this time, no matter how often I get paid to write, or get published, or whatever it is I’m doing, it’s still a thrill and an honor to hear from you and hear what I wrote had an impact on you, or changed your thinking, or just made you laugh. It ever gets old. I will never take it for granted. It’s always a highlight of my day when it happens. I just thought you’d want to know that.
Speaking of Peeps, there’s not a lot of positives to aging out. But I personally love having people I’ve known for thirty-five, forty years or more who are still in my life. My “new” best friends? Yeah, ten years or more. “New,” hell. Maybe I am just cherishing my friends because I’m now in the phase of my life when I start losing them, but that’s how it goes, I guess. You don’t realize people aren’t always going to be around until they are ripped away from you in their forties or their fifties and everyone says, “too young.” Ya think? Man, we get what we get, and I love you all for our time together, now and then.
Lastly, family. As I’ve gotten older, it’s become more complicated, and I’m not really sure why. My once-close nuclear family is split up—and we’re still all pretty pissed about it—and I’ve not spoken to my brother in years. Less frustrating and more humbling is Cathy’s family, who made it very clear to me several years ago that “I wasn’t going anywhere,” and I’m happy to still have them all in my life. Not to be outdone, Janice’s family, all seventy-three of them, wasted no time in passing around the Loving Cup and chanting, “Gaba Gaba, we accept you, we accept you, one of us,” and then making me play their very specific holiday card games.
My relationship with “family” and what that means is pretty specific to me and no one else. I can say with complete assurance that I never thought in my teens that my family would be spread out over several households and be crammed to the gills with various nieces and nephews of all different shapes and sizes. All the in-laws, the other brothers, the steps and the halves...it’s all family. It just is. It’s family because we’ve all decided that we were going to be that, and we did. I found the right people for me and I’m so thankful and grateful.
The Pupdate: Final Entry
Those of you who know the score are aware that the Apocalypse Bunker is an urban edifice, surrounded by concrete and asphalt. This is fantastic in the event that we need to pick off the zombies from the roof. But when you have a dog, it’s kind of a problem.
Sonya was always up for anything. We made the alley, with its side patches of ground and glass, her destination for her daily constitutional walks. We took her to the various parks and green spaces here whenever we could. But her “staycation” spot was the lush green lawn of the County Courthouse, located conveniently right across the street.
She finagled a visit whenever she could; sometimes it was Jedi-Mind Trick that whoever was walking her fell for. “Oh, we’re going over here now, are we?” Sometimes it was a treat, earned for being a “good girl” in the parlance of our times. Once in a blue moon, she’d take matters into her own hand and charge the field—usually after one of the many guerilla squadrons of squirrels who would taunt her from afar. To them, she was known as “Ku-Ah-On,” which means “the Destroyer” in their barbaric tongue. She’s managed to cut short the lives of three squirrels who dared to venture from the safety of the arboreal canopy over to the mean streets of the Bunker, where life was hard and death came swiftly to those looking for popcorn instead of wayward nuts.
The lawn of the courthouse is thick and soft, and it was Sonya’s favorite place to lounge about and luxuriate. She also had a great interest in the feral cat population, but alas, the feeling was not mutual nor reciprocated. During the holidays, when the lawn became overflowing to the point of choking with every light up and/or mechanical Christmas decoration, Sonya loved to check out the constantly changing array of smells from multiple visitors.
It's safe to say it was her happy place. And so that’s where we laid her to rest. I got her ashes back, along with some thoughtful mementos, including a paw print. Her remains weren’t much—it seemed nowhere near enough for her. But remains is a good word for it—she’s not here anymore. What’s left is the ash and the dust; not the heart, nor the soul. So maybe the bag was just right, I guess.
We waited until it was evening, lest we be shooed off by well-meaning county employees. Some of the staff came with us; they were her friends and co-caregivers as well. Sonya grew up with multiple people in her life who smelled like buttered popcorn and wanted to walk her and give her treats. We should all be so lucky. I thanked them for taking care of her, for helping us in the last year and a half, when age finally caught up with her.
I said goodbye one last time to Sonya, my sweet-sweet, my good girl, and then I walked her in a straight line towards the big tree where all of the squirrels liked to congregate. A final act of defiance. The bag emptied, I took a deep breath, and once again, I felt a weight lift off of my shoulders, much the same as when I scattered Cathy’s ashes. It was done. We had said our goodbyes, and all that’s left is the conscious act of unlearning the habits of being a dog owner for so long. Both easier and harder than it sounds.
There was one last bit of business. Janice held back a small amount of Sonya’s ashes. Her idea? “The next time we’re in Austin, you can take this to Cathy’s place and they can be together that way.” Wow, right? I truly think Janice is one of the most considerable people I know. She thinks about other people, like that, all the time. I’m never that nice, ever. Thankfully, she more than balances the scales for my misanthropy.
From the Vault: Keep Your Nuts to Yourself
We are closing tonight with my yearly tradition, delivered pre-Thanksgiving this year because you see me again until after Black Friday has come and gone and hopefully not killed us all. I’m sending it right after this newsletter, separately, in case any of you want to share my earnestly-delivered holiday wish for us all. You can, of course, simply click the link right here and be whisked away to the Bunker’s Main Site.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Moonlighting (Hulu)
A famous ex-cover girl super model loses most of her carefully accumulated fortune when her accountant embezzles is all away and leaves her with only a few assets, including, but not limited to, a detective agency. It’s on her books as a tax write-off, but with no other income options, she reluctantly teams up with the wisecracking lead investigator, who is unlike her in every single way. Can they find common ground and work together?
Five seasons of television says “yes, they can, and they do.” The classic, iconic, groundbreaking and trendsetting TV series has finally been re-released to streaming, and who knows why it took this long. Maybe it’s fortuitous, in that Bruce Willis could use some residual income at the moment, and I don’t begrudge him a single nickel. This is a chance to see Willis in his prime, singing, dancing, cutting up, and making sparks with Cybill Shepherd that ignited an obsession with the audience of “will they/won’t they” that may have been the first modern instance of such a thing. If you only know old and craggy-looking bald Bruce, do yourself a favor and go back in time for a bit.
Bruce Willis was my spirit animal all through high school, and you don’t have to squint very hard to see where pieces and parts of my extant personality sprang from. And Moonlighting had an outsized influence on me, hitting when it did smack dab in my high school years, and watching David Addison play the class clown to Maddie Hayes’ stick-in-the-mud straight man was revelatory, especially since the show was this weird and sublime mix of classic detective and film noir movies and stories, rapid-fire overlapping Howard Hawks-esque dialogue and the broadest possible comedic palette, ranging from clever wordplay and cheeky puns to outright slapstick and burlesque. They did a Shakespeare episode, y’all—their most famous episode, but the brilliance was on display for the first three seasons, no doubt.
Viewed through the lens of post-modernism, Moonlighting was a revelation. It broke the fourth wall, seemed to know that it was, in fact, a TV detective series, and played against convention as often as they embraced it. It’s weird to think that this was on in the same zeitgeist as Miami Vice and Magnum, P.I. I wouldn’t recommend Moonlighting to anyone under the age of 30 watches things looking for problems (it’s got ‘em). But everyone over the age of 50 needs to hie thee ho over to Hulu and check out the show you probably watched at the time and just forgot how much you really liked it. Personally, it’s been a real comfort of late.
Always happy to see a new report pop into my inbox. This one made me smile, laugh, and get a little teary-eyed. Sending you big hugs, my friend.
As for Moonlighting, I was a big fan of it during it's first run when I was honestly probably too little to understand most it (I was 8 when the show started). But I loved the fast paced dialog, and I thought Bruce Willis was cute, so. . . I also loved The Dream Sequence episode, and for some reason, "I Told You I Love You" stuck as a core memory for me - that song and scene still popping into my head from time to time and taking residence for a little while. I am definitely looking forward to rewatching the series.
I wasn't a huge fan of Moonlighting but we all crammed into my college dorm room to watch it because my roommate had a TV (and then Max Headroom right after it). I do remember it fondly. I'm a few years older than you. My high school TV was the time of "Shogun" and "V" (the miniseries) and the TV knockoffs of Indiana Jones (Bring Em Back Alive; Tales of the Gold Monkey) and Blue Thunder (Blue Thunder, Airwolf) and so forth.
In the spirit of thank yous, I want to thank you for your writing. I've seen you at conventions since I moved to Texas in 2015 and began reading your writings a few years ago. I've enjoyed your writings. The older I get, the more I want to thank the creators whose works I have enjoyed. Richard Moll (Bull on Night Court) passed away recently and I never sent him a thank you, which I regret now, but I learned that John Larroquette still has an X-Twitter account so I sent him a thank you for his work over the years. I hope he sees it. We have to thank people while they're still with us.