Pop Evil and Starset

***POP EVIL AND STARSET***

Tomorrow night I’m headed over to Seattle to see a Pop Evil concert at El Corazon and the following Wednesday I’m going back to that same venue to see Starset. With only two days of recuperation in between the two shows, I’m glad I got all of my creative work done today and the night before. Chapter fourteen of Silent Warrior is live and in color while my reading commitments are all caught up. I’m definitely ready to rock out in Seattle with two of my favorite rock bands.

The first time I heard Pop Evil’s music was when they opened for Papa Roach in 2013. The second time I saw them was at the Pain in the Grass festival in 2016. If you like explosive hard rock that can occasionally dip into sensitive territory, you’ll like Pop Evil. They have five albums to their name and their most recent self-titled project came out just a week ago. I bought “War of Angels” and “Lipstick On the Mirror” for my niece Reina on her fourteenth birthday back in January and she was grateful to say the least. I’m anticipating an awesome fucking show tomorrow night!

The first time I heard Starset was in 2014 on one of the Music Choice radio stations and it was their single “My Demons”. By the time they unleashed their next single “Carnivore”, I knew I had to have their Transmissions album, which is their first CD as a band. A year ago they came out with their sophomore effort Vessels and they’ve been going strong ever since. Starset has the gimmick of being space explorers warning humanity about the demise of mankind. It’s not meant to be cute or funny; the music and gimmick are actually quite emotional and can draw in a huge crowd on any given night.

I like to jokingly refer to rock concerts as one-day vacations, which is why I list them as life events on my Face Book page. It seems like I’m stroking myself when I do that, but I really do consider these concerts to be that important to me since the bands rarely visit my home state. I don’t do this with movies or books, because I can get that kind of experience at home without making any kind of pilgrimage to a stadium. Concerts? You have to get your ass out in public for those.

But just like with any pilgrimage to the city of rock, I will return safe, sound, and in perfect condition to continue my creative endeavors. I’m not fond of memes that say writers never take vacations. While it is true that not writing for a while makes us feel homesick, getting out and experiencing life is paramount to our creativity. You can’t have one without the other. That’s what makes Silent Warrior so special to me: because some of it (not all of it) is based on true experiences I’ve had as a teenager in high school. I’m Garrison Kelly and I’ll see you next time!

***SILENT WARRIOR, CHAPTER 15***

I know one audience member in particular has been waiting patiently for a chapter told from the point of view of Mr. Simpson. Ask and you shall receive. In this chapter, the aloof history teacher barges into his daughter’s bedroom and confronts her about having sex with Scott. During this heated exchange, Adrienne (the daughter in question) exposes a secret to the reader that will give some insight into why Mr. Simpson is as insufferable as he is. What’s that secret? You’ll figure it out when the rest of the world does! No spoilers for you!

***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“There are a lot of fine-looking women all over the world today. They don’t all bring you lasagna at work. Most of them will just cheat on you.”

-Silent Bob from “Clerks”-

Sonya Jade

NAME: Sonya Jade
AGE: 18
OCCUPATION: Student
CANON: Beauty and the Barbarian


As humans looking for a loving companion, we owe it to ourselves and our partners to find a balance between romance and shallowness. We all have shallow instincts whether we want financial stability or physical beauty from our significant other. And then you have a woman like Sonya Jade, who recently got “fired” from a short story that was included in the now defunct anthology Dragon Machinegun, “Beauty and the Barbarian”. Her claim to fame would have been the fantasy genre’s most shallow woman if she actually rose to that level of notoriety.

Sonya was the beauty, obviously, and the barbarian was a super handsome gentleman named Ogre Bladefist. Sonya found herself in trouble no matter where she went. She was almost molested by a group of goblins after leaving a tavern drunk as a skunk. She was also bloodily spanked by a group of teachers and schoolmasters at a religious college. Who would rescue her from both of these brutal assaults? Ogre, no less. In addition to being easy on the eyes, he was also a vicious fighter who shattered bones with the laziest of efforts. A muscle-bound stud with ponytail hair and overly protective fighting skills? Cha-ching! Sonya scored big time!

Sonya would have spent the rest of the night in bed pleasuring herself if it hadn’t been for Ogre sneaking into her cottage and…(clears throat)…”giving her a hand with that”. The orgasm of the century was on the horizon until a bitchy old witch named Rose Lovelace tracked Ogre down and turned him into the most hideous monster she could think of. Brown razor teeth, shit-covered fur, constant green drool…basically, all of the things in a monster that gave Sonya nightmares and nausea fits. Could she still love her man after all of this?

Therein lies the question of the day. If she was really the deep thinking, three-dimensional character we all want to get behind (in more ways than sodomy), then she would have stayed with Ogre until the very end. But she didn’t. She immediately demanded that her man sneak into Rose Lovelace’s castle and abscond a cure for his ugliness. After an uphill battle with the nearly indestructible Rose, Ogre found the cure, but chose not to stay with Sonya after she showed her true colors. To be honest, I couldn’t blame him for the choice he made and my readers probably couldn’t either.

So there you have it: a harsh way of telling my audience to choose everlasting love and a beautiful soul over something as temporary as good looks and an oversized bank account. As someone with a round tummy and no employment history, I’ve been preaching this message for a long, long time. Am I biased? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean the message can’t have any meaning. Unfortunately, due to the piss-poor writing style I used to write “Beauty and the Barbarian”, it never saw the fame and fortune it could have potentially had.

Besides, what could I truly do with a woman like Sonya Jade? Her shallow point of view doesn’t make her very sympathetic. But her beauty could be an asset to someone for reasons other than animalistic sex. She has long purple hair, milky white skin, rose red lips, and irises that live up to her last name. That, and she happens to be a passionate lover. I could see Sonya Jade being a seductive rogue character in a D&D campaign. She could use her beauty and passion to make men (and lesbian women) fall in love with her while Sonya steals their riches right from under their noses.

And then to really make her three-dimensional, she could donate her treasure to a worthy cause such as protecting animals from being abused or giving shelter to rape victims who want to run away from their own abusers. As my lovely beta reader Marie Krepps once said, “Talk dirty to me!” Of course, she wasn’t trying to come on to me; she was merely suggesting that my ideas were good. I hope she likes this idea as well!

　

***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“There are millions of fine-looking women in the world. They won’t all bring you lasagna at work. Most of them will just cheat on you.”

-Silent Bob from “Clerks”-

Clerks

MOVIE TITLE: Clerks

GENRE: Independent Comedy

RATING: R for graphic language and sexual themes

GRADE: Pass

Convenience store clerk Dante Hicks is called into work on his day off and has to deal with a barrage of moronic customers from anti-smoking zealots to tabloid freaks to egg sorters to even two drug dealers named Jay and Silent Bob. To pass the time, Dante has philosophical pop culture conversations with his best friend Randal Graves, who works at the video store across the street. Dante’s love life is on the line as well as he contemplates keeping his loyal girlfriend Veronica or shacking up with his high school sweetheart Caitlin. All of the nasty things that happen to Dante reiterate his catchphrase “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” again and again.

Because it’s an R-rated movie, Clerks relies heavily upon crude sexual humor, the most prominent examples being the significance of the number 37 (don’t ask), Randal ordering porn movies in front of young customers, and Dante and Randal having a conversation about nudie booth janitors in front of an easily offended customer.

There’s also humor in the antics of the stupid customers who torment Dante and Randal on a frequent basis, the opening example being a Chewley’s Gum salesmen who riles up a crowd of smokers to sell more gum. Others include the “milk maids” (women who look for jugs of milk with the latest expiration date), a girl who asks for an item’s price even though the sign is right behind her, and a perverted old man who takes a porn magazine into the bathroom and dies on the toilet.

If the humor doesn’t get you laughing until your ribs hurt, it should at least make you crack a smile. As funny as this movie is, it also has a serious side to it near the end. The lesson learned from Dante’s love triangle is to choose the girl who loves him the most. It should be obvious to him, but strong crushes and even stronger memories make choosing hard.

The other lesson this film teaches is to take responsibility for your own actions. Dante was offered chances to go to college with Veronica, but instead he stuck around at the convenience store and he has to pay for that with his misery. He also gets in a fight with Randal near the end because he believed everything that went wrong that day was Randal’s fault. In short, if you’re in your 20’s, act like it. You’re not in high school anymore; you’re a man. Reckless zeal will cost you valuable opportunities.

Is it any coincidence Clerks was the breakout film for now famous director Kevin Smith? Is it also any coincidence this movie was a multiple-time award winner? How about the fact this movie earned cult classic status? If your skin is thick enough to withstand the sexual humor, give Clerks a try. I first saw this movie in 1998 when I was 13 years old. I didn’t understand a lot of the humor at first, but looking back now, there’s a reason Clerks was a staple of my youth: because it’s that damn good.