At long last, we’re all very pleased to present the second episode of my single gay puppet dating webseries (I never said I wasn’t “niche”). Fun fact: this episode combines footage taken over almost three years!
In this episode, Mike loses a bet and has to delete his dating apps. But is the real problem the apps…or is it Mike?
Thanks for watching! If you haven’t seen the weirdly-quiet episode1 yet, check it out here.
I’m wishing you the very best of holiday s this year. This past year has been a hell of a ride for everyone, but I feel like there’s good stuff on the horizon for 2018. I’m taking my usual December off from writing/posting here, but lots of projects are simmering in the pot for next year. Thanks for being on this journey with me!
First published in PQMonthly.
FeelTheBern69
537 Miles Away
74 Years Old
5’8″, 162 lbs, Some Hair
I Am Into: Geeks, College, Daddy Chasers
Open To: Friendships, Relationships, Dates, Elizabeth Warren as a running mate
What I’m Looking For: My socks! Haha. Looking for a reason to delete this app. Fiscal Top but social Bottom. Looking for someone to bring home to mom. Intelligence, self-awareness, confidence a must. Currently job hunting/interviewing so may relocate in November of 2016, please be open to relocate too. Like to read, take walks, go to the gym but not lately haha. Sometimes shy until I warm up to people. Want to Netflix and chill? HMU. Tested neg 8/2015 and poz friendly.
Thanks for all the woofs guys, sorry I can’t reply to everyone. Continue reading
Once in a great while, an artist comes along who pushes boundaries, gives viewers opportunities to rethink their paradigms, and creates bold, brave art that’s sometimes not fully appreciated in its time. Occasionally, that artist is honored with a retrospective, and given a chance to participate, bringing their beautiful creations to a larger, more mainstream audience. That artist was Marina Abramovic.
But now, we have been graced with the Björk retrospective at the Museum Of Modern Art. This quirky singer, originally the lead singer of The Pixies The Treaclies The Sugarcubes, debuted her solo album in 1993. It was called Debut. She’s known for her unconventional style and eclectic production design of her music videos. She’s also known by basics-at-large mostly for wearing a dress that looks like a swan to the Academy Awards in 2001 (seriously, people can’t let that go). I visited New York last month in balmy February, and was given early access to what is by all accounts definitely a retrospective. Continue reading
As I posted recently with as little fanfare as possible, I released Part One of my first novel, The Tropic of Never last month. It’s very “me”: a gay sci-fi epic with a main character, Edgar Locke, thrust into an unfamiliar world full of wonders, on a city-sized ship that shouldn’t exist. Recently, I asked three artists whose work I admire greatly to read the book and create art from it (with minor, but barely minor spoilers). I couldn’t be more honored to have these talented people interpret my words. Here are their creations:
by Nick Fauble
The above is Edgar Locke’s beginning of his passage through The Spikes, interpreted by Nick Fauble, a Portland-based artist and graphic designer. This passage was easy for me to write, because it was a sequence I always knew was coming and I had lots of time for the ideas to marinade in my brain before I typed it out. I’m really looking forward to future collaborations with Nick, do check out more examples of his awesome work here!
You know that feeling when you’ve worked on something for a really long time, and you release it into the world? It’s wonderful and terrifying. Those are the feelings I get when I announce the release of my first book, The Tropic Of Never. It wasn’t a difficult birth, but the conception was less than auspicious: Continue reading
Little Curtis, getting up to shenanigans
The loose, rattling knock sounded through the entire three-story farmhouse. For Pete’s sake, thought Betty drying her hands on the dishtowel as she came out of the kitchen to answer it, they’re going to knock that poor screen door right off its hinges! It wouldn’t take much though, she mused: repairing that old rickety screen door had been on Joe’s honey-do list for as long as she could remember. They would likely repair it in time for Little Curtis’ wedding at this rate.
She looked down the hallway at the front door, and tried to make out the figure through the yellowing lace of the window covering. The figure outside was tall and lanky, and bore the slightly stooped silhouette of a life hard-worked, of money hard-earned. She realized with a start that it was her neighbor, Jasper Proctor! She almost didn’t recognize him without the beard he used to sport. Why, he hadn’t come around in…Betty counted the years on her fingers, and when she realized she would need a third hand to properly count the years since old Jasper had trundled over from his cattle farm next door, she gave up. It must have been right after the mill fire that he had last come over. His driveway had been a makeshift fire line for the blaze that had swept the plain, and it still bore the soot deeply: she could always tell which of their long driveways a car was coming down, from the color of the dust it raised. Continue reading
The deeper I look, the stranger stuff I find. This one’s an old party invitation. No really, this was the only text I included to describe the holiday party I invited friends to. It resulted in some confused guests, tentative RSVPs, and an amazing party. It’s kind of clunky, with some awkward word choices, but I think it would make a fun children’s book…I also keep laughing at how the Mill Fire keeps popping up often in my writing. The stories must all take place in the same universe.
Carl
The squirrel padded along the verdant path of needles and leaves. His friend, Hoofy the Clumsy Deer, followed close behind, occasionally tripping on a log or rock protruding from the snow-patched ground.
The squirrel’s name was Carl. “Catch up, Hoofy!” he called over his shoulder. They were already late, and being late made him grouchy. A lot of things made him grouchy since he quit smoking.
“I’m going as fast as I…”, Hoofy’s sentence was cut short by a strangled gasp as he caught his antlers in a low-hanging branch and his gangly legs went flying out from under him. He thrashed for a few seconds, scattering snow everywhere, then went still in defeat, awkwardly suspended from the branch by his antlers. Swaying and bobbing slowly, he sighed. “Um…a little help here?”
Carl snorted through his nose. He considered leaving the young fawn there. Serve him right. Getting caught like that, being careless, when they were already late. Especially today, a few days before Christmas, and on the way to the party! He needed a drink. Continue reading
This is an old piece I just found, dusted off. I don’t know why I’m posting something so melancholy on a morning when I woke up almost giddy. But I like it. Clearly I had read some Douglas Coupland before writing it.
I woke up this morning thinking about you. It was raining hard, the kind of rain that collides with the ground more than falls onto it, the kind that snaps twigs off of the new trees they just planted in Grant Park. I stumbled into the bathroom, stared in the mirror for a second (mornings are when I most look like my father), stumbled back into the bedroom, slept some more. I heard somewhere that sleeping too much means that something’s wrong, that we have all of these built-in triggers in our bodies to alert us to what’s going on inside, but we’ve learned as a species to ignore them. If I forced myself to sleep less, would I get healthier? Could I stop thinking about that call, then?
The phone woke me up around noon, the ringtone pealing into the empty apartment, the screen animated with a cartoon of a dancing phone, furrowed, angry eyebrows on its indeterminately-ethnic face. I hate that face. That cartoon means it isn’t you calling. Continue reading
As told in outline form, huge hat-tip to Dave Eggers
Written by Michael James Schneider
The Blacksmith, a blacksmith, lives in time unknown, odd combination of anachronism and technology so advanced it seems archaic. Steampunk? No, probably not.
Handsome (of course), rugged, eyes green but seem startlingly brighter because his face is always covered in soot. Salt and pepper. Something in there about how he will sometimes draw his forearm across his face to wipe away the grime, and gets even dirtier. (Don’t hammer this one too deep, though, people will get it..haha get it? hammer). He is a blacksmith because his father was also a ferrier. No, maybe his father was a sword maker, and Gray (the blacksmith’s name, but everyone calls him Plover) chose early on to be a simple smithy. Is this a cause of a rift? Maybe. Continue reading
