December 28, 2024

Ridiculous Opinions #270

THOUGHTS AND GOALS AS WE APPROACH 2025!

Well, I started writing about films and it appears to have lost me a ton of subscribers. Perhaps those people could tell that I wasn’t that into it? Maybe. Burnout is real. My newsletter has mostly been about ME. To me, that’s a stupid idea, but the minute I start writing about movies, people start to leave. Surely there’s something wrong with that equation. Oh, well…I hear my audience and am shifting gears.

Here’s a few thoughts from Randall P. Girdner on this fine day.

1. My news diet is wonderful. (I wish I could go on a REAL diet). Since Trump was elected, I stopped reading the news. Just straight up stopped. I don’t peruse the newspapers; I don’t watch television; I don’t doomscroll through social media fanning the flames of my outrage. I just do my own thing and am quite happy about it. It’s amazing how the world continues to turn without me paying attention to things that I can’t control. Am I uninformed? Pleasantly so.

2. I got an Xbox for Christmas. I’ve been playing the Indiana Jones game, which is great! But you know what we’ve been playing more? Zuma’s Revenge and Peggle. We just pass the controller across the couch as a family and trade rounds. It’s actually a lot of fun. My goal for 2025 is to get into a few video games, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

   

3. I finished writing the “pilot” issue of a comic in approximately 3 days last week called "Fellowship Team 6” (name subject to change). It was a request from a colleague. Here’s a summary:

   Fellowship Team 6 battles an invasion of grotesque creatures called Wogs in modern-day New York City. The team consists of fantastical characters including Fwort (a dwarf), Meer (a handsome elf), Klop (a half-breed brute), Klara (a warrior princess with a tragic past), Sgt. Hulka (a military leader), and Kreep (a powerful but disgusting wizard). After the Wogs emerge from a portal in Times Square, the team defeats them in brutal combat, and Kreep uses magic to make civilians forget the incident. The story ends with a captured Wog horrifically birthing a bloody hobbit-like creature who warns that someone is "coming for all of you."

   That ending scene? Chef’s kiss! And kudos to me for creating a character named Sgt. Hulka. If you know, you know…

4. My other goal for 2025 is to try to draw every day. I don’t know why I don’t do it, but I really should. I am not unskilled when it comes to drawing, but I also am not skilled. The only way to solve that is to just draw. I would like to do it every day, but life gets in the way (and clearly, video games will as well).

5. I completed a BIG run last night. It was awful and to be quite frank, it was only an achievement for someone like ME, who is overweight and pushing that weight around on a frame that is not suited to that kind of punishment. But I did it and that was a big deal, because it means the next chapter of fitness shall begin. Sigh. It gets harder as you get older, folks, but I still do it.

   

6. Have I told you all that I wanted to start a haunted bookstore? What does that mean? I want to open up a bookstore somewhere that is more interactive theater than a bookstore. The idea is that when you go into the store, every person there is a character. All of the workers will be actors in my bookstore and throughout the course of the day, they will play out small scenes both amongst themselves and the patrons of the store. We will, of course, have the proprietor of the store, Mr. G (played by myself), an eccentric old fool who is sometimes possessed by demons and likes to commune with characters from the past. We would have a time portal in one part of the room where we will occasionally visited by ghosts of the past, including authors, artists, and speakers who may or may not be haunting the place. Plus, the workers at the store would be the general book nerds. My actors would be in charge of creating their own characters to play throughout the day (while still maintaining the register to sell books).

   And five nights a week, we will have “events” in the bookstore that people can come to. You know how bookstores have author readings and things like that? Well, we will have scripted events that draw in the public. One night, we will bring in authors that have written books that don’t exist. One night, we will have a seance. One night, we would have a meeting of the “Acclimated Spooks Adventurist Society”. Basically, these would be nights of improv.

   On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, we would have shows for kids, with overly dramatic book readings and visits from goofy superheroes.

   I would call it, “Mr. G’s Bibliotheque of the Macabre & Unusual”. It would look like an old bookstore that one might find in the odd corners of London. Like this:

   

   Can you imagine how cool this place would be? It would be half-bookstore, half-coffee-shop, 3/4ths improv theater. There would be a $1 charge to enter. This is what I’d like to do for the rest of my life. All I need is a sponsor.

   I HAVE THE IDEA! I HAVE THE KNOW-HOW TO MAKE IT HAPPEN! I just need someone to finance it. If you know of anyone with some money sitting around, please let me know. I’m ready to go with all of this.

So, that’s where Randall P. Girdner’s brain is at right now. I leave you with some words of wisdom from Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, who turned down massive amounts of money to license his characters and just quit.