Archive for the Short Stories Category
I'm not calling anyone out since I work with this person professionally...but...if you confess to this publicly, your sins might be forgiven.
At a meeting today...
Sales Guy: Hey, you should call your mom today and pretend you're getting brutally murdered.
Me: WHY WOULD I DO THAT?
Sales Guy: Because of your American Goulash blog! She's superstitious, right? So record yourself calling her and pretend something bad happened because of Friday the 13th, it would get lots of hits!
Me: You might be an excellent salesperson, but you're a terrible person.
Sales Guy: Ha! I get that a lot, actually....
Thanks for the tip, but I don't write this series to torture my mom. I write this because she tortures me.
As a kid, I was a video game junky with no access to video games. Even though I had developed some
business savvy at a young age to fuel my once-a-week arcade experience, I was still too young and broke to afford a console gaming system, let alone the expensive games they required.
My friend Alia happened to have a Nintendo system AND a computer, but I was always forbidden from visiting friend’s houses (except for the occasional birthday) due to 1) germs, 2) potential loose parental supervision, and 3) the risk of dogs and cats. In an attempt to save me from my sheltered childhood, Alia tried to bring over her Nintendo, but none of the televisions in my house had proper inputs for a video game system. In those days, computers were also not portable, which meant no floppy disk/CD-ROM games, either.
The only solution to my video game conundrum was to play over the phone. As a team, Alia and I beat
Maniac Mansion II: Day of the Tentacle, Roger Rabbit, Goonies, and
Friday the...
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The first television I ever saw was the decrepit black and white Zenith we kept in the middle of the combination living room/bedroom that my grandmother and I shared growing up. It was the only television in the house, if you don’t count the other larger, broken television it was precariously perched on. The stupid thing had a sixteen inch screen, weighed sixteen tons, and had no remote control. Instead of buttons, it had two knobs: volume and channel. Anytime I wanted to change the channel, I had to use all of my might to pinch the knob with one hand while wrenching it with the other hand because it was semi-broken.
Despite the frequent hand cramps, this television was my prized possession. I spent almost every waking moment watching one of the four channels that came in clear: ABC, PBS, WPIX (now the WB), and WWOR (now UPN/my9). In fact, I learned most of my English from watching
Sesame Street and
Perfect Strangers.
Around second or third grade, I discovered that there were cartoons on the other channels, namely FOX, which came in mostly as snow with the occasional flash...
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Although I create a fair amount of my own
independent art, I'm a producer at a
commercial company where we offer video, animation and design services for hire. Due to the nature of this business, I often spend more time educating the public about “how commissioned art works” than I spend actually creating art. Whenever I’m struggling with a client that wants the “trifecta” (fast, good, and free/cheap), I return to the lessons I learned from my first troublesome client in fourth grade. For fellow artists, writers, designers, and creative people in general, I have included hover-over footnotes that relate this fourth grade story to getting paid for commercial arts in the real world.
I was always good at drawing, but I didn’t realize until fourth grade that it was a very effective deterrent against bullies. People would find some reason to pick on me, but once I started drawing popular animated and comic book characters, everyone – including the bullies – gathered around to watch.
One day, Lance*
(name has been changed to protect the guilty), the prematurely humongous bully that got away with everything because his mom...
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I recently finished the rough draft of a manuscript for an "American Goulash" book. I mentioned it on Facebook because I was excited to be in the very beginning stages of the loooooong road of publishing, when I received a phone call.
Here is the transcription:
"Hello, my name in [Censored]. I've been reading your American Goulash story series online and I am impressed. [So & So] told me you were finished with a manuscript, and I am interested in potentially representing you."
Boy. Word travels fast on social media.
My heart started to race. "Well, I uh, ehhhh...I'm flattered. I am only in the first draft stages but-"
"Okay, good. Then I can talk to you about some of the topics. I LOVE the silly little things about your grandmama fighting robbers, but I cannot represent anything inappropriate like sex or getting your period."
"Uh-"
"I am very interested in your stories about Bible camp. Could you focus more on the spirituality aspect of going to Bible Camp and how it affected your relationship with God?"
"Uh, well...I'm not sure how much you read, but...
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