My wedding anniversary week; this is when it all begins. The Fall was always my busiest, most pleasurable season long before becoming self-employed. It’s only fair since big-box stores stock Christmas crap in September. Halloween approach-eth.

Summer in Texas is a brutal skank and, for some silly reason, my wife and I chose our wedding to be the pinnacle of all sack-boilers: August 31st.

No other day of the year announces itself like the miserable villain August 31st, therefore we tamed it and made it ours. That’s the kind of couple we are; brain atop brawn like the hero of Thunderdome. At least we made it “casual dress”.

I have a lunch meeting today with the film director. That week of “Hank Moody-esque” fantasy draws ever closer and I’m pretty stoked. Even though it’s not a big budget boner-flop AAA studio film, it’s the fruition of my ultimate goals; simultaneously supporting a worthy cause.

In 2005, when I was derailed from a suicide attempt and caught the writing bug, I said I wanted to: become published, write something known outside my home area, write for my hometown newspaper to solidify myself in the historical archives, be recognized at least once for my accomplishments away from my home, have a book signing at a hometown bookstore and sign a chick’s boobs who wouldn’t let me see them otherwise when we were younger, work in Hollywood, work with Lucusfilm, witness my name in the credits to a film via a theater screen, and to move to a big city, piss everyone off, finally learn to play guitar, and fade away in the most cliché ways imaginable. The Jar Jar Binks of my graduating class.

Meager, yet specific goals, wouldn’t you say? Most likely inspired by a multitude of plots from numerous eighties teen films; subliminally.

Fast-foreword twenty years, and I have accomplished all but one of those goals. That will be remedied during the last week of October.

All of those check-mark scenarios ended either tragically or unconventionally, but I made them happen nonetheless. Ironically, I’ll be receiving a colonoscopy midway through my week on set. I’m expecting bad news.

I’m not having health issues – it’s preventative –  but the universe is a poetic bitch. As a writer, I would write my character ending that way. All irony.

You see, the greatest poet who ever lived laid a path for me long before I knew any of this would be possible. I remember the moment like it happened five minutes ago.

I’m laying on my bed in my grandmother’s doll-room. Yes, I spent half of my high-school years living in a room full of creepy antique dolls. Ask me again why I am the way I am.

I had on a pair of ancient, over-the-ear headphones, and I was under a spell.

The movie will begin in five moments
The mindless voice announced
All those unseated will await the next show

We filed slowly, languidly into the hall
The auditorium was vast and silent
As we seated and were darkened, the voice continued

The program for this evening is not new
You’ve seen this entertainment through and through
You’ve seen your birth your life and death
You might recall all of the rest
Did you have a good world when you died?
Enough to base a movie on?

Yes, goddammit; I did.

If anyone ever wants to know why I did what I did when I did it and to whom I did it to/with, blame Jim Morrison. It worked in Wayne’s World 2.

Preach truths, toke jokes, and shoplift Amazon. My deathbed wish will be to ban all electric cars in states where weed is still illegal. This is how heart attacks happen, y’all, and it’s no longer funny.

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