Rolling with the Punches

Your boy been going through it

This has been an especially hard-hitting Mercury Retrograde season. In the same week, I had to fix the main water line to the house after it burst, had to bust a hole in the soffit under the eaves to let a giant raccoon out of our attic, and then we went to see that new Puss In Boots movie.

The movie was pretty good—lots of cool animated fight scenes, I’m a sucker for characters who take agency and fight with what little they have left to overcome their demons, plus our three-year-old was cheering and cracking up the entire runtime—but then we leave the theater and hit up the arcade.

That was also a good time. The kid goes nuts for this floor-to-ceiling Space Invaders game they got with these big-ass blasters you can wield in both hands and all these seizure-inducing flashing lights, and then he figured out the throttle on the motorcycle game this time and actually won two gold medals in a row, so basically—my kid could beat up your kid. But anyway, we throw skee ball and reel in virtual fish and shoot at dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, then we turn in 300 tickets for a plastic six-inch sword that glows in the dark, and it’s all cool, my wife and I are smiling at each other, feeling good bout our last family outing with just this one rugrat before her scheduled C-section on Wednesday that’ll make Rowan a big brother, and then we get a couple miles down 35 heading home and the car is overheating, making weird noises.

I pull over and pop the hood and—hey, check it out, the serpentine belt snapped. So shouts out to the homie Marcus for being a real one and picking us up, and Meyer’s Towing for coming out on the weekend and not charging an arm and leg to get across three towns. Swear to god, I’ma be so glad when retrograde wraps up in a couple days. I’m staying my ass inside much as possible, besides the obvious vehicle maintenance I gotta do. And the work that keeps piling up. Fuck, I guess I’ma just keep thugging it out. Ain’t no slowing down.

Just two more days…

Phoenix Asher will be born on Wednesday. We’re all hyped. And there were some crazy synchronicities at the movie and the arcade. There was a phoenix in Puss In Boots that at one point is used in aiding the final boss battle, and in one of the arcade motorcycle races, Rowan went off-road and flew off a cliff and this phoenix came down and swooped him up to carry him back to the track. Swear to god.

But anyway, I’ll either be at the hospital or fresh home with a newborn during this week’s recording of Agitator, but David’s got that shit on lock. It’s going to be a banger episode even without me. And I should be back in the chair soon as next week, with another munchkin contributing to the chaotic ambiance the show is notorious for.

Meantime…

Check us out talking Charli XCX and Hideaki Anno’s Love & Pop and Cutie Honey on I’m So Popular. Then check us out talking Eminem, Kid Rock, and Curve by Liz Claiborne on The Perfume Nationalist.

I wrote about authenticity over on Bestseller.

The audiobook of Grant Wamack’s trippy desert splatterpunk God’s Leftovers—narrated by yours truly—just dropped. Snatch that here.

On the Agitator front, we’ve been dropping bonus episodes and other content left and right on Agitator Z. The growth with that in its early stages has been inspiration enough for both David and me to throw everything we got into building it into a channel of all kinds of creative projects. Starting as early as this week, we’ll be serializing our next novels chapter by chapter, week by week over there, and there’s film projects coming up on the horizon too, along with the continuing audio show.

I’m reading Michael Crichton’s Sphere, Kobo Abe’s Woman In the Dunes, and a ton of manga. Listening to 03 Greedo’s Free Greedo (he’s finally out! I’ll be writing an essay soon on his insane output leading up to the prison stint he just got paroled out of, but meantime, the album is fire). And I don’t get into watching shows much, especially American trash, but The White Lotus hooked me and I just finished the second season with my jaw on my chest. Mike White pulls off tonal shifts, mood, and escalating tension effortlessly.

Anyway, y’all be easy, I gotta go fix my car so we can bring our baby home.