Challenge

Getting Tired of People Dying

January 21, 2022 /

Meat Loaf Just Died. 74…

If I had a favorite musician, it was Meat Loaf.  Never met him. Still…

Dave Wolverton’s (Farland) funeral is today a couple hours from here. Good friend for 37 years. Not sure when Ron and Scott’s funerals are. More than likely about now. I don’t go to funerals. I didn’t even go to my mother’s funeral. (There were other reasons as well.)

Seemingly 2022 is just going on like the last two years. Oh, joy…

But I did get the 20th story done. The third Bryant Street story in a row. Watched some old Twilight Zone last night, got Rod’s voice stuck in my head, so decided to play in the story tonight. Basically the story I wrote tonight, very short, would be a perfect Twilight Zone script. Only it is set on Bryant Street, where Twilight Zone lives.

I am now going to put my headphones on and listen to Meat Loaf perform “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” live in concert.

 

11 Comments

  • Thomas Bennett

    January 21, 2022 at 7:35 am

    Death is hardest on those left behind, at least as far as I know. I believe in ghosts and souls but I’ve never knowingly been contacted by anyone I cared about after they pass.

    I’m sorry for the friends we’ve all lost these past 2 years. The party is less fun without them.

    The best we can do is live a life worth living and remember the best memories of our departed friends.

    Thanks for sharing this bit of eternity with me Dean. It sucks less because of your friendship, support and stories.

  • Vincent Zandri

    January 21, 2022 at 9:44 am

    Great stuff Dean,

    I too also don’t go to funerals. Something about them, I don’t know, that makes it all seem futule…

    In any case, I too have had the Twilight Zone in mind and Rod’s voice with two of the short thrillers (10K -20K words) I wrote over the past couple weeks. One is sort of based on the Terror at 20,000 feet Shatner episode (mine is an entiely different story of course, but it has a plane in it and bad weather), and another based on the Talking Tina episode, except in my story, a writer buys his daughter a “USA Baby Doll” that’s AI enhanced and is fully aware that he’s killed a man and gotten away with it. I’m going to continue with a story about a bank robber who died, and ends up in the Metaverse which is a real thing now, and ends up getting hunted down by Wyatt Earp…This is me writing for me and my entertainment. If other’s like them and buy them, all the better …

    All this on top of my one novel per month challenge, thanks to your inspiration.

    V

  • Mihnea+Manduteanu

    January 21, 2022 at 2:03 pm

    I am so damn scared of this virus. Last year it almost took me, I was on oxygen for a week, fighting for my life.
    Sorry for all these losses and I can’t believe to tell you how much I admire you because you power through and keep the streak going.
    I am not that strong.

  • Jason M

    January 21, 2022 at 4:50 pm

    Sorry about all this, Dean. My grandparents lived into their 90s and spent the last ten years of their lives going to funerals. It was their only way to socialize for about a decade.

    Who were Ron and Scott?

    • dwsmith

      January 21, 2022 at 9:30 pm

      Ron Goulart, the writer I patterned my career after in ways and he wrote stories for Pulphouse at different times. Great writer and guy. Most of his books were published under other names. If you have a William Shatner book, you read a Ron Goulart book. And Scott Welch, a long time person in the writing business.

  • Peggy

    January 21, 2022 at 6:19 pm

    We were driving across Texas when we heard the news – and just as I said I was going to have to listen to “Bat out of Hell” (the album), “Two out of Three Ain’t Bad” came on. The station we were listening to played several of his hits (mostly from “Bat” and “Bat II” albums but also a soul duet he had back in the 70s that I’d never heard before, so that was good.

    That’s the trouble with living a long time (even immortality) – too many deaths/funerals.

  • Dave Hendrickson

    January 21, 2022 at 6:29 pm

    Saw Meat Loaf in person one time, the night after my computer career seemed to drop off a cliff. I was one month into my first software engineering job when the company suddenly went out of business. I was panicked, but Brenda and I went to the concert and for that night, the worries faded into the background. Meat Loaf brought the house down with “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights.” An All-Time Favorite.

    I wore the grooves out of Bat Out of Hell. Seems extra sad that he and Jim Steinman (composer of those great songs and others) died within a year of each other.

  • Mark Kuhn

    January 21, 2022 at 8:15 pm

    Meatloaf’s music was an anthem in my life. Bat Out of Hell came out in 1978. It was a time in my life where I was entering young adulthood. So, so many memories listening to him in my first car, a 1970 Chevy Nova. Thankfully all those memories serve to replay in my mind some of the greatest days in my life.