I haven’t done this in a while because I always feel like an idiot. I’ve been getting crazy traffic the past three weeks. This site was always a nice little ego-stroke but lately it’s been an ego blowjob. This may seem like a boys club but please check in on the comments section or drop me an email, I’d love to know who you all are.

Anyway, some more Holiday Wishes going out. I discovered Scott Mills this year. When we were putting together the team for Western Tales of Terror #5 Josh told me this cat Scott Mills was going to be doing Steve Niles story and, like a good editor, I went and got a few of books. The following week I got the rest of them. His style is captivating – it’s so loose and free-flowing yet definitive and original. It’s easy on the eyes yet pack so much story. I fell I love with Cells, Trenches, Big Clay Pot, Master Plan and My Own Little Empire.

My Own Little Empire, however, was published under a company I was also unfamiliar with – AdHouse. I tracked down some of their books and discovered Joshua Cotter’s Skyscraper’s of the Midwest which I never hesitate to label my favorite book of the past year. When people ask me what I’m looking forward to in 2006, I say “Skyscrapers of the Midwest #3 and the Eisner we’re winning or Elk’s Run.”

Chris Pitzer from AdHouse can see a good story. Empire, Skyscrapers, Project Superior, Bumper Boy – Scott Morse’s upcoming Noble Boy. I expect big things from AdHouse and I’m throwing some holiday love to Chris and all the fine talent he wrangles up. Please, people, buy every book these guys put out – I want to see them succeed and so should you.

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Junior Summer was the first summer in which I didn’t go back to New York. After spending Junior Year as an RA (award winning RA, I should add – yes, we had award ceremonies) I made a lot of connections at the ORL and was offered a position doing writing and acting in skits for orientation groups over the summer. I honestly spent about a week or two at the beginning developing the skits and then an hour a week putting them on. This job, this one hour a week job over the summer, got me free housing in a brownstone on South Campus. That’s what we call dope, boys and girls.

The “day job” gave me a lot of free time. I practically worked full-time at Jillian’s to pay for food, nightlife expenses and my cell phone bill. The rest of the money went into the blooming “Closet Elvis Productions”.

For some of you, Closet Elvis Productions reminds you of Closet Elvis Living, the website I was doing before The Moose in the Closet. Closet Elvis Productions was the brainchild of me and my boy Guam and started when the theater troupe we were involved with didn’t want to put its name on our movies we planned on filming. I wanted to call our little group Moose in the Closet Productions, Guam wanted to call it Velvet Elvis Productions so we settled on Closet Elvis Productions.

One of the first things to get the label was my screenplay for a movie called Sleaze which, I can honestly say, was the first attempt at making a movie where a sleazy guy pretends to be gay to get a girl. There have been many people to do it afterwards, and I highly doubt they “stole” my idea because, well, production stalled on that one real quick – I’ll get to that soon.

After the first draft was completed we had a read through over at Warren Towers – the readers were basically a bunch of directors from our troupe that were in town for the summer. There was an uncomfortable moment when this girl Katie read a line that was essentially a vulgar facial joke to which Guam said, “Don’t use any facial jokes,” and everyone agreed – facials are not funny, apparently.

We pulled the female lead from a play we produced last semester and the male lead was actually this recent high school graduate that Guam somehow knew from an instructional improv thing he did, I think. The guy’s name was Matt, we met him for pizza and talked about the movie as if we were Hollywood big shots.

Everything was in place – unfortunately we didn’t have access to the equipment we were promised by our film-school connection. She was going to “lend” us some serious equipment and get us editing time at night but wussed out in the end and landed us this VHS recorder they used in the mock newsroom and could no longer promise us the editing time.

We decided to make the most of it and work out the editing problems later – figuring we can transfer it all to digital and edit it on the computer. Quality would suck but, whatever. Except, of course, the first day of shooting was terribly pathetic. Just the look on the actors’ faces when they saw the camera was heartbreaking. I told them it would be fine, we set up the dorm rooms and shot a couple of scenes. I decided to watch back some of them and was hoping to do it in private but my leading lady came in to sneak her peak.

Her comment, and I’ll never forget this, was: “It looks kind of…cheap.”

I had nothing to say except, “It’ll look better after editing.”

She knew I was lying. I knew she knew I was lying.

After the shoot we went back to my apartment and talked over the script some more. I made promises that I’d get some better equipment and sent my people out to lunch one me, told them to talk up some chemistry between the two of them. While they were gone Robin showed up – but I already told that story.

We never shot another scene for Sleaze. Mainly because we could get the equipment we wanted but also because Guam and I had our own little project we were cooking up – Mr. Sandman. Directed by The Bastard. A cast of about thirty people. An hour and half movie that we shot in three long-ass days.

But that’s tomorrow’s story.

And not to depress the fuck out of everyone but Matt, our male lead, passed away around this time last year. I didn’t know the dude that well but Guam was his good friend. I feel kind of cheap talking about him without paying my respects for a moment.

The dude was gold. Seriously, he knew comedy better than a lot of people I’ve ever met. He ended up being one of the main guys in Mr. Sandman and him and Guam became really good friends out of that. After he graduated he moved out to LA were he was making some serious moves in the entertainment business. The guy had it all. He was attractive, funny and a great writer – he honestly had his shit going.

My boy Guam had some serious heart problems a couple of years back, he’s still suffering from them. It wasn’t a result of hard living, it was all biological, and he even made an amazing play based on it called “Tales of a Broken Heart: Not a Love Story”. Shortly after, Matt had a heart-attack as well. It’s kind of fucked up – you don’t think of kids our age having serious heart problems and I knew two.

Matt was getting better but one day last year it caught up with him. He was engaged, had it all going on and just like that the shit was over. I know it’s Christmas time and all and you likely don’t want to hear shit like this but I just wanted to bring home the fact that even though my stories tend to be lighthearted and detachable – these are some real people I rolled with despite the fake names. Matt comes into play a lot this one summer, he’s in a lot of these stories, and I just wanted to honor the man’s memory a little bit.

I just wanted to make sure you all know he was a genius and it’s a shame we lost him. He’d be making us all laugh one day if it wasn’t for how fucked up life can be sometimes.