Escape Is Just The Beginning

So I like to consider myself a bit of an entertainment guru. While I was at work today, an assistant manager was leaving work and she caught me asking for movie recommendations. She wanted something creepy so I recommended the 2001 thriller Frailty with Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, and Powers Booth. Totally creepy. What a great movie. Similar to Denzel Washington’s Fallen and the awesome psychological mind-hump The Sixth Sense.
Taking great pride in this recommendation and knowing that she is set for the night with a great movie, allow me to share what the old RMF is into right now. Released just this week on Tuesday (the 4th) is the second season of Prison Break on DVD starring Wentworth Miller and Dominic Purcell.
With Lost really going off the deep end last season, Prison Break has cemented itself (in my opinion) as the single best television show on TV. I could go on and out about the series and such but you can do Internet searches and find all that info.
I’m pushing to make it through all 22 episodes before September 17th when the third season kicks off. Season 2 ends with a big cliffhanger ending (the same as Season 1) that leaves you saying, “Holy crap. Where are they taking me from here?”
Now, to give you a flip side of the coin, Amy doesn’t like the series because Season One is them escaping from prison (SPOILER ALERT: They escape.) And Season Two is about their flight from justice and trying to make it across the border while being hounded by all kinds of law enforcement. Of course, the escape and the run is what makes the series so incredible. Like the old saying goes, the best laid plans are laid low by mice and men. So things go wrong and the group has to adapt. It is what makes the series so great.
Still, Amy feels the series should have only lasted five or six episodes and be over with.
Seeing that the second season was released on DVD and with the day off, I immediately went and cashed in my change cup at the bank and drove 90-to-nothing towards Wal-Mart. If you have an extra $40 and 22 hours to kill, Prison Break Season Two gets two big thumbs up from your friendly neighborhood entertainment reviewer.

Happy viewing.

Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

A long weekend, a long week, and finally a chance to relax. Labor Day Weekend was by no means a vacation for me. After logging 55 hours at the store over the last week, I am looking forward to a day off. I am hoping to get some writing done and relax a little bit. Thank goodness for my friend Luke at work. I think we made the long hours tolerable by keeping each other laughing, even if it is just in quick passings.
As I was leaving, a good friend Ra’ asked me what I had planned for tomorrow (finally a day off). I smiled and said, “Nothing!” Thank God for the overtime. I just found out the second season of Prison Break came out today.
Thankfully, (as reflected by my MySpace page), my XBOX 360 was returned this week after suffering a general hardware failure. Microsoft sent me a BRAND NEW console so thankfully I am back to raiding tombs with Lara and blasting battle droids and Geonosian warriors with my Clone Commando brothers. It is a nice way to relax after a hard day’s work.
I am getting artwork regularly on two of the three comic book series that I am working on right now. It is very cool to see my words come to life through artwork. The emails have been flying fast a furious but it is such an exciting time for me. I had to share the cover of The Praetorian with friends at work because I was so excited. Everyone’s eyes pop when they see it and describe the character displayed in the art as “cool”, ”sexy”, ”strong,” etc.
So I am working on several projects at the same time and I sometimes wish I could pull a Michael Keaton in Multiplicity and clone myself a few times. Well, maybe just clone one of me and about four of Amy. Now that would be cool.
Regardless, things continue to develop here at the Foley Compound. Amy is still taking her nursing classes and running the house while I work full time. The kids are back in school and doing well. Alex is playing 5th grade football and according to the kids on the team and the coach, he is pretty darn good at it. (Thank goodness he doesn’t take after his old man.) He’s going to be a lineman and Amy and I think it will be great for his self-esteem.
Jason was diagnosed a while back with ADD and we are working on medication to keep him focused on his schoolwork. Thank goodness for the councilors at Osage. They’ve done more in nine weeks than the councilors at Adair did in three years.
We are still trying to decide if Lauren will attend K4 next year or continue in Head Start. She is clearly becoming a little lady.
So that is it. I cannot wait for football season to start this Thursday. As always, I have high hopes for my New York Giants. Strahan is back and I think Shockey is ready to light it up. But as goes Eli Manning, so go the Giants. (Fingers crossed.) Plus, the new Fall TV season is right around the corner.
Good comic work going, lots of hours on my next paycheck, football season is right around the corner, 100-degree days are over… Man, things are pretty good right now! Hope everyone else is this good!

Ryan

P.S. I know it’s cliché but I have some other good news too… I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance by switching to GEICO.

A backward poet writes inverse.

I think when dealing with any creative endeavor, there are moments of question and doubt. Sometimes these moments can be fleeting and other times they may seem like an impossible demon to slay. Regardless, I think that you have to face these fears head on with sword in hand. You cannot run from these fears and you cannot let them defeat you.
Back in the day, I began my writing career by publishing fan-fiction stories on the Internet revolving around the video game Tomb Raider. Having completed several comic book assignments and finding some downtime, I was curious if I could “go home again” and go back to writing a Lara Croft story.
Now writing prose in a novel format and writing a comic book script are two very different styles. (I have to admit that because of its speed, I like the comic script format better.) As I began to flesh out this story and started putting the scenes together, I felt those demons of doubt beginning to creep in and look over my shoulder. I began to feel those pangs of uncertainty.
The Internet can be a pretty cruel place. After all, as a writer, you are really nothing more than an email address. I began to wonder if people would even like this story. Would they hate it? Would they find out that I was a hack that had somehow managed to fake his way into the genre?
But as the story began to come together, I began to feel my confidence return. I liked the way the story was flowing and it satisfied me. I once heard a quote from George Lucas where he talked about how he made movies that he would want to see in the theaters and he was just lucky that a lot of people wanted to watch the same movie he did.
I’ve tried to take that attitude with my writing. I write stories that I would want to read. And as I am now definitely over the hump and making my way towards the end of this story, I believe it is a story—as a Tomb Raider fan—that I would want to read.
Of course the question now comes, will the rest of the on-line TR community like it? Hey, you can’t get your feet wet if you never get off the porch. Sometimes it is best to just dive in headfirst. Remember, kids, when in doubt, fortune favors the bold.

You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

Uggg. Insomnia. Normally, insomnia is not exactly a bad thing if I don’t have to work the next day. I sneak into the living room. The house is quiet. The kids are asleep. I know the phone won’t ring. I can write without any sort of interruption. But, admittedly, I’m getting older and I need my sleep, especially if I have to work the next day. Or, in this case, in a few hours.
I’m venting here [hey, what’s a blog for?] but admittedly, on a personal level, my life could be a whole lot better right now. I am taking great strides to make it better but sometimes it feels like trying to ice skate uphill.
I don’t want to sound like a broken record but I think 90% of my problems stem from money. This is typically where the church types begin to warn, “Money is the root of all evil.” This is not true. If you check your scriptures, it warns, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” And while I admit I do love money, I realize that I do not need excessive amounts to be happy, I just want enough to be comfortable.
I just want enough to have adequate health care, plenty of food in the cupboards, and be able to go to the movies without cashing in my change cup.
Right now, I am the sole breadwinner for the family while Amy is in school, which means we are scrimping right now to get by. And it sucks. Right now, Amy is about 90% certain she will begin class to get her RN license in January. But it’s only August still. Which means a long time to go on a crappy salary.
Which means a pretty shallow Christmas. Which means having about 20 bucks left over at the end of the pay period. I just hate it. I mean, thank God we own the house. If it weren’t for that, we would be up crap creek. It is probably one of the few saving graces that I have.
Now, we are making our bills. The kids aren’t starving. We have electricity. We are not close to being homeless. It could be a lot worse but when I want to go out and buy a new DVD, I can’t just go out and pay cash for it. I have to save up for it and I hate that. I have to save up to buy Scrubs on DVD or a new music soundtrack… And if I have to save up to buy a DVD set, how can I go out and buy a new set of beds for my boys or a new couch for Amy? Some people go out and buy new furniture or new clothes because they want them. I don’t have that luxury. I wish I did. And when I think about this kind of thing, it makes me frustrated and adds to my stress.
Despite having over 50 legit “friends” on MySpace, my circle seems to be ever shrinking and I think that adds to the depression. With my mom gone and my Dad in California, it seems like I don’t have a “my side of the family” anymore. Many of my best friends are too far away. The poker games have broken up. And (see above) my amount of money is limited at best. Which means I work, I come home, do my Internet stuff, write a little bit, go to sleep, and then it starts all over again. My amount of contact with a wide variety of people is shrinking by the day.
There are times that I feel like I see the people at work the most. Thank God that my boss, Dave, and I are really cool. Also, I have made a good friend in the meat department named Luke (you can find him on my MySpace page). We have become fast friends. We share the same level of humor and share a lot of interests. But if I talk to Luke at work, we get glares from the management. And this begins to translate into laziness when really it stems from a craving for human contact. I mean people want to spend time with friends.
I am flanked by good news. I don’t want people to think my life is complete s--t storm.
Yes, I am working in comic books instead of just working at a grocery store. But right now, comics don’t pay the bills. There is an enormous amount of time between writing a script and getting a paycheck. This might be different if I had a monthly assignment. [And I am working on that: See my next blog entry.] I am still going to try to B.S. my way into Google but that is a long shot…
It is a tremendous thrill to be working in comics but splitting time between comics and my regular “job” is pretty hard sometimes.
The kids are all back in school which means the food bill drops tremendously.
I still have plenty of creative irons in the fire.
Good news and better times are on the horizon. I can see them. And if not for that horizon, I would probably be in pretty bad shape but as it is, for now, I’m taking it like an alcoholic.
One day at a time, people. One day at a time.

A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

There is that old saying about God not closing a door without opening a window. I know it is cliché but in this case, it counts. Thanks to my publisher Sean O’Reilly, I was introduced to a tremendously talented artist named Giampaolo Frizzi that is based in Lucca, Italy.
We were originally scheduled to work together on a commissioned series. After seeing his samples, I was hollering at Sean saying how much I wanted to work with him. In fact I sent along an email saying how much I wanted Giampaolo to work on a future licensing project. I was crushed when I found out that the money behind the commissioned series wanted to use a different artist.
Such is the nature of the industry and sometimes artists are chosen for different reasons. I saw this as a blessing because it introduced me to a second, incredibly talented penciler that I have had the pleasure of working with. (More on this later.)
Still, Giampaolo and I wanted to work together and Sean asked me to come up with a series for us to develop together. So when Giampaolo sent me a sketch of a Roman gladiator for a painting he was doing, this giant light bulb came on over my head.
I sent a script for a gladiator-themed storyline I had been developing since 2004 and the rest, as they say, is history. It is this storyline that I have started to receive artwork on.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. And so on. Artwork is kind of a funny thing. You can look at it and say either, “I like that” or “I don’t like that.”
I look at the art of comic superstars like Jim Lee, Ed Benes, Mike Turner, Al Rio, Emiliano Santalucia, Frank Cho, and Brett Booth and I say, “Wow, I wish I could draw like that.” Giampaolo draws like that. I could not be happier that someone with an art style that I love is working on one of my stories. We have been working on cover designs, discussing novels, and influences. Literally, it is a dream come true. This is what I was put on this earth to do. No doubt.

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

It’s ironic that my last blog entry was talking about my mother. Today should have been my mom’s 58th birthday. Having the day off from work and not realizing that it was the 10th, the date might have passed unnoticed until my wife reminded me this morning. I’ll say it again. Cancer sucks kids.
I’ve been away from the blog for a few days because of my work schedule and a number of projects but I am hoping to get on a more regular routine with the kids getting ready to get back in school. I have been working at my 9-to-5 job that is not exactly 9-to-5, I’ve been working on art approvals for my comic book projects, and I have been working on some personal projects to improve my home and family life.
Unfortunately, most of my spare time has returned as my XBox 360 experienced the “Ring of Death,” also known as a general hardware failure. Thank God Microsoft has the problem fixed via warranty but I am without my video games for about two weeks. Microsoft is supposed to be setting up a support group in my area but they haven’t found a building big enough to hold us all.
Of course, with my system down, this puts a definite crimp in my latest personal project. While I tremendously enjoy writing the comic book script, I got my start back around 1998 writing short stories for the on-line Tomb Raider community. (This was long before the Angelina Jolie movies made Lara Croft a household name.)
When I purchased my XBox 360 secondhand cheap, the first game I bought was Tomb Raider Legend bringing me back to the TR franchise after a substantial absence. While playing the game and after defeating the final level, I began to get an itch… The old saying is that you can’t go home again. Well, I’m going to give it a try.
While it still very early and in the first draft planning stages, I’ve been using some of my downtime to write out a Tomb Raider E-Story. I’ve done a few test pages and passed them around to friends and the response has been fairly positive. So this is part of the reason for an absence on the blog but I’m hoping to write here about my creative process.
More Soon.

Thinking About My Mother...

Nine times out of ten, I often curse the length of my commute. On average, the trip takes about 22 minutes. Granted I am only driving from outside Adair to Langley. There is minimal traffic. We don’t really have a rush hour. (It is one of the few advantages of living in the country.)
My dad is currently living in the San Francisco area and his commute is not measure in miles but in time. Chances are he is probably driving the same number of miles but it takes him twice the time because of the traffic.
My main complaint about my commute revolves around the amount I have to spend in gas. Still, I think it is good to have that therapeutic time to myself. When I am on my home from work—especially when I have had a bad day—I enjoy using the time to decompress before I see my family. I use the time to listen to whatever song I want and whatever volume I want. But there are times when I just shut the music off and take some time for my introspective thoughts.
It’s times like this—the quiet times when the outside world doesn’t exist—that I think about my mom. For those new to the blog, my Mom passed away shortly after Christmas in 2005 after experiencing nagging pain in October and officially being diagnosed with cancer in mid-November of the same year. Take a second to think about that timeframe. She went from being healthy as a horse to gone in under six month.
Despite being over a year and a half since her passing, I think about her all the time. The last movie we ever watched together was Batman Begins, so now that I am seeing sneak peek shots of The Dark Knight, I think about her.
I’ve really come to like the music group Breaking Benjamin. I hear some of their songs like Until the End and You. I firmly believe is the saying, “Greater indeed are pleasures that are shared.” There are times when I think about my mom wondering, “Would see like this song?” “Would she have liked this movie?”It is strange but I think about my mom the most when I find things that I like and I can no longer share them with her. My mom was only 56 years old when she died. Don’t smoke, kiddos. Learn from her mistake.

It's wierd the way “finger puppets” sounds okay as a noun. –Demetri Martin

Humor is often considered to be subjective. What those find funny, others might find moronic or even offensive. I don’t consider myself to be a tremendously highbrow individual. Let’s face it. A guy getting hit in the nertzs is pretty darn funny no matter how you slice it.
But true comedy, in my opinion, is something that is not tremendously funny initially but when taken out of context, it becomes hysterical. Like Haley’s Comet or the Aurora Borealis, such an instance of pure, perfect comedy is rare, possibly once in a lifetime. And when that happens, you must learn to embrace it.
Such an incident happened today at work.
Working in my department, I looked up from my work and saw an old woman. She was a retiree. Probably a grandmother of three. She was wearing a gray shirt that matched her hair and on that shirt was a logo. To look at it would make you say, “Awww, that is sweet. She’s an animal lover.”
And yet, if you take that same shirt and change the wearer, let’s say from her to—oh I don’t know—me, it becomes the greatest T-Shirt in the history of time.
Not having a camera on me, this is my attempt to recreate the shirt in Photoshop. And yes, I have already begun the Internet search for a version of the shirt to purchase myself.

God bless America.

A lot of money is tainted - It taint yours and it taint mine.

I think that mankind was created with the intent of being social creatures. After all, the most brutal form of punishment is to place a prisoner in solitary confinement. Human beings are designed to interact with one another. When I was working as a full time father, it was rare occasions that I would get to spend considerable amount of time with adults. And as such, during those rare times when I got to spend time with people who could carry on conversations, I was extremely happy.
I have gone to back to work at a job that I had through high school and college while Amy goes through her nursing program. It’s not like I have this massive amount of friends so you will see that about 50% of the people in my MySpace friends list are co-workers. Many of the kids that I work help keep me connected with the youth. There are times when I feel pretty old (I’ve ranted about this before) even though I’m only 32. But we were talking in the break room today and many didn’t know the song “The Humpty Dance” by Digital Underground. Am I really getting that old?
So, there are times where I just DO NOT want to go into work. The money is crap. I’m doing work that they could hire a high school kid to replace me to do. And it is pretty much the same thing day after day. I can stomach the job because I know that as soon as Amy finishes the nursing program, I am out. Still, it can be a frickin’ grind. But then some days come along and things do not seem so bad.
And when it happens, it is because of the coworkers. The great sage Jack Handy once said, “My dad felt laughter was the best medicine… which is why so many of us died from tuberculosis.” But when a select group of us can get together, tell stupid stories, and laugh at infantile jokes, things don’t seem that bad.
Today was one of those days.
It was a day where we busted rear early, got everything done, and then spent the rest of the day cruising along and filling holes as needed. This allowed for time to laugh at jokes and do just a little bit of clowning around in between filling cartloads of product.
I think there are times when you have to have that laughter to break the monotony and keep spirits up. In the end, I actually think that improves productivity. If you can leave at the end of the day smiling and laughing, that’s a good day. And then the strange thing is when I get home and tell my wife about my day, the stories are never as funny as the events themselves. Or at least, she doesn’t laugh nearly as hard as she should.
I’d like to think that is because is not in the mud and blood. She is not in the trenches with us, so maybe she can’t understand how the humor helps us cope.
Now, granted, I’m working in a grocery store. It is certainly not war (although it feels like it sometimes). But it is a thankless job. It’s a grunt job.
I think that if I were president, I would implement a policy where after you complete college, you have to serve one year in a grunt position (i.e. grocery store, Wal-Mart, fast food restaurant, convenience store) at minimum wage pay. I think that if everyone did that—from the snooty super rich all the way down to the lowest income worker—then people would walk away with respect for that job position. They would realize that those grunt positions are a tough job that doesn’t pay a lot of money and that even though they don’t earn a lot of money, the position still should earn you respect.
I think that if people did that, the world would be a better place…

One third of all explorers who visit the north and south pole develop bipolar disorder.

Dr. Cox: If I wanted my pateints to be more depressed, I’d just have them read Newbie’s latest blog entry.
JD: “Why being really lonely is sometimes super awesome.”
Scrubs
My Fishbowl (2007)

NO SPOILERS!
So I re-emerge amongst the land of the living after going into self-imposed exile to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that was released on Saturday, July 21st. Being a long time fan of the book series, I was excited about the last book in the series and at the same time a little sad. It is strange to come to the end of an era.
I came to the Potter phenomenon shortly before the fourth book was about to be released but long before the movies came out. Potter is one of those unique series where if a genie from a magic lamp offered me the opportunity to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (or the United States’ sister school), I would jump at the chance. I would sell everyone reading this entry into slavery for the opportunity and never look back. Of course, I feel the same way about Star Wars and the mafia…
What amazes me is how much of a cultural phenomenon Harry Potter has become. First of all, J.K. Rowling is a fantastic author. I remember taking a lot of flack from friends for reading “a kid’s book” but, really, the only people who say that are people that have not read the series.
And don’t even get me started on people who think that the books are “evil” because they promote witchcraft. Effing R-Tards, all of them. I remember shortly before the first movie came out, there was an article in the local paper where one side was for Harry Potter and the other was against… but the person against HP hadn’t even read the book. Instead, they read books about the book. They couldn’t even take the time to read the book for themselves!!! Morons.
At work, half of my department is reading the book. Half the video is reading the book. While that may not seem like a lot of people, what was the last book that you knew 12 people were all reading for recreation at the same time?
Admittedly, I chewed through the 750+ pages a little faster than normal. If I am spending twenty bucks on a hard back book, I want to take my time and get my money out of it. But at the same time, I didn’t want to overhear some jerk store talking about the book and ruining the ending. Again, notice, I put no spoilers in this entry.
So if you are loyal fan, I’d love to hear opinions on the book through email or if you have never read the series, get started. I know it is cliché but the books are much better than the movies. The movies are good but a lot needs to be chopped out for the running time.
Get reading, boys and girls. I guaran-damn-tee you won’t be disappointed.