#30minuteexperiment

The idea is that I would sit down and write for 30 minutes on a specific topic or on no topic but just write, completely free flowing, not looking back or rereading for error-correcting and once the 30 minutes was up, I was done, posted to never look  back and reread what I wrote. I must have done about 30 of them before I stopped, and i haven’t reread a single one of them as much as I wanted to. They’re somewhere pages back on this blog if you really want to read them.

Anyway, one year later. A lot has changed, a lot has stayed the same. The oddest thing that happened in 2020 is that I started to get my shit together. Not completely, mind you. I still have too much stuff piled up in my sink that should be washed.. or probably just thrown away at this point. I did a lot of cleaning but not nearly as much as I should have done. Yes, it’s a shame that I didn’t do a 30-minute experience for cleaning... but other things have changed, not necessarily for the better.

Like many people who don’t live with partners or spouses or parents or kids, I’m very lonely. I’m not sure why it took me so long to realize that as I long ago came to terms that I’ll probably be spending the rest of my life alone, but it’s really been hitting me the last couple weeks.

I’ve done a bunch of Zooming, maybe not as much as many but more than some, so I have been able to chat with friends and family and see their faces, but really haven’t seen many people in person. That’s been almost as many months as I went without seeing a movie in a theater. Don’t even get me started on the 11 months I’ve spent not going to concerts, the longest time without a concert in over 40 years. Even the year I was fighting cancer was only 10 months between concerts.

But COVID has changed a lot and some of the things may be better. For instance, hopefully people are being more conscious about cleanliness and about people’s personal space. Maybe some are being more conscientious of others and less “me me me” but honestly, with the vaxx rolling out, I definitely see a lot of people going back to their old selfish ways. Sure, they’re not going out and they’re complaining about people not wearing masks because they’re worried about others getting Covid. Sure. Whatever you say. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad people are getting vaccinated since the sooner that happens, the quicker we get back to normal, but it makes me think of some of what I wrote in this 30ME about the situation. I haven’t read it back but I remember writing one piece called “The Scarlet Letter” which was about people going out into the world with some sort of ID whether they’ve built immunities or now that they’v gotten vaccinated. Sure, it should be enough to have that card that you’ve been vaccinated but how long before restaurants and bars and clubs and concerts decide that people who attend must have proof of vaccination. Some of the conditions for attending the recently reopened Javits and MSG (for basketball!) requires testing and presumably sme proof of testing.

Me, I’m just glad to have the option to go back to theaters. That is my small iota of selfishness that I will freely admit and not having the ability to do so was part of what really brought me down beyond the lonely existence that COVID has created. Mind you, it’s not like when I go to the movies I’m interacting with anyone else in the theater but just seeing people in a theater with me enjoying whatever I’m watching is just so much nicer than sitting at home watching stuff on my laptop or on my Fire/Apple TV which became a bit of a gamechanger late last year when I could watch more stuff on my TV.

I’m guessing that most people who know me think I’m absolutely thrilled with what’s happening with Governor Cuomo right now, especially due to this complete disregard to New York’s movie theater industry, its millions of movie fans as well as the entire movie industry got sidelined merely by a few dozen theaters in NYC being closed for almost a year.  Nothing can be further from the truth. 

While I’m not on the side of believing everyone who has come forward with allegations against Cuomo, I do believe that maybe 50% of what’s been said is true. But I also think there’s some political motivations in mind that’s getting all these women to suddenly come forward and say how “uncomfortable” they are. The timing is a little weird with the mayoral race going on this year and the Governor elections next year. Hopefully, there will be a fair and unbiased investigation to find out the truth, but it’s obvious that a lot of politicians are ready to throw Cuomo under the bus even before the investigation comes back. Once again, it’s the court of public opinion, and for whatever reason, all these politicians who felt that Cuomo had too much power as Governor under emergency conditions, well, he should no longer be Governor. 

What many people attacking Cuomo don’t realize, at least not yet, is that I don’t think there’s a single politician who could do what Cuomo did over the past year. Sure, maybe that power went to his head and who knows? Maybe he was tough to work for either because he made inappropriate jokes or talked down to women staffers and maybe he did kiss one woman’s hand or kiss a woman on the cheek at a wedding ... or ask permission to kiss another woman. I mean, all of it is silly because the only allegation that’s potentially criminal is if he groped this unnamed woman.

Regardless of what is true and real and what is fiction and politics, you get rid of Cuomo, there will be chaos. There are lots of power-hungry politicos who will look at that vacant spot as THEIR chance to get that power and it will be like a feeding frenzy. And none of them will be capable of keeping the vaccination and reopening plans for New York going the way that’s been planned. I hope everyone who has come forward, both “survivors” -- holy shit, I can’t even type that without smirking-- and politicians wanting to take Cuomo down and get rid of him realize this, because I certainly don’t trust DiBlasio (the man who most hates Cuomo and wants him gone) to do a good job. I seriously worry for the future of New York State without having Cuomo to steer us back to normalcy.

Anyway, I probably spent more time on that subject than I wanted to. I do hope we get a new Governor in the next election but let Cuomo finish what he started, maybe without so much executive power. His career is probably over whatever happens with this investigation. The court of public opinion has already done its job.

I think I’m quickly getting to my 30-minute time limit but with so much other stuff I want to writ about, maybe I’ll try to do another one of these, a continuation, soon.

That statement isn’t exactly true, and I’ve actually spent the last two months or so trying my best not to get angry about things. It might be no surprise that I’ve frequently had anger issues, not any that might lead to me going against my normally non-violent nature but definitely the type of anger that keeps people up at night stewing about things that they can’t do anything about. 

A certain John Lydon sang the words “Anger is an energy” in the PiL song, “Rise,” and he was not kidding, because as hard as I do everything in my power to be angry or “in a pissy mood” as some might put it better, it’s something that I have a really tough time controlling. Anger just comes at me when I least expected, and no surprise, when I experience it, it puts me in an even worse mood. And even less surprise, it can make me a very unpleasant person to be around or to talk to. Just ask anyone who has tried whether it’s my mother or brother (Hi, Rob!) or sister ... and frankly, some of my better friends may not see it as much because part of the reason they’re friends is that they not only don’t piss me off or make me angry (almost ever) but they have something in their DN or personalities that helps make me less angry.

If you read my #30ME about “Mixed Emotions” or “Love,” you might be thoroughly confused since what I’m saying here might seem like the polar opposite to what I wrote in those essays. Welcome to the life of a moody Pisces.

Yeah, it’s getting harder and harder not to be angry these days, especially living in such an angry world, and that was even before the pandemic and quarantine. People have been angry for a very long time, and it’s almost impossible to spend any time on social media without experiencing it, and frankly, it doesn’t help me at all, especially if I want to be in the right mood to write stuff... and anger most definitely is not it, let me tell you.

In fact, part of me leaving my last regular assignment was that certain aspects of it which I won’t get into was constantly making me angry, and it left me no choice having to decide whether I wanted to write surrounded by such negativity all the time. I’m not even sure I was angry about what everyone else ir or was angry about it. Part of my anger just comes from being around so much anger. I just have this empathic nature that helps me feel greatly for others but it’s a two-handed sword where I end up absorbing others’ anger into myself if I spend too much time around it.

As someone who can rarely be happy and angry at the same time -- I’m very black or white like that -- it’s a constant struggle to try to be happy and in the right head/mood to write stuff and to interact with others, which I’m doing more and more via this laptop of mine than in person (for obvious reasons).

Because of this, it gets harder and harder to get out these moods when I do wake up angry. Believe me, I’ve been working extra hard in the last couple months not to get angry or fly off the handle, but it gets kind of tough when you’re dealing with stuff like the “mouse incident” i shared a few days ago or ongoing issues with my landlord, which i’m trying hard to not get angry about.  (If you’ve read some of the Emails I got from him or what he was trying to do, believe me, you’d be angry, too!)

But more than that, there’s a lot of anger about the current state of the country and our government, and that’s something I try hard not to get angry about only because it’s such a frustrating thing that I don’t feel I am capable of doing anything about. I mean, the reason we have such an awful President right now is because so many people were angry about things that the LAST President did... and the people who picked that President were angry with the PREVIOUS President and it just goes back to the very beginning of the time. No one is happy with anything but when there’s an outlet or avenue for anger (like social media) then have at it!

(I should mention that I’m writing today’s #30ME listening to Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chair, a long-time favorite that actually starts with a song called “Shout”... I wonder if the same song was written today, it would be called “Type in Caps.” Sorry, that was my obligatory stupid joke tangent for today’s #30ME.)

And yes, making jokes is one way I try to allay my own anger and keep from being in a constant fuming range. So is listening music. I know these things from living with this moody ass soul for so many decades that I can kind of figure out ways of not being angry all day long. Even doing this writing can help, so skipping a day like I did yesterday to pursue what ended up being a fruitless effort, isn’t gonna help my anger the next day.

The weather doesn’t help either, like the fact that it’s suddenly 20 degrees over a week into May when most of us would rather be outside or at the movies, neither of which aren’t allowed with strict regulations. Oh, and it’s too cold outside, too.

I’m gonna stop myself right here because I’m well aware how angry and ranty my previous #30ME was about “Free Advice” and I’m trying hard not to just use this experiment for 30 minutes of wanton raging, that’s for sure.

Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to get at is that there are many ways to deal with your own anger, whether it’s to stay off social media or spend quiet time listening to music or watching adorable dog videos on Quibi (which I do, too) rather than trying to have a pleasant conversation with a landlord who regularly puts you in a bad mood. Even taking a nap can help or taking a nice long bath.

In other words, there’s plenty of ways of dealing with this horrible situation in which we’ve found ourselves that has only gives us one option, “Change or Die.” And I mean that in the nicest possible way because it’s become fairly obvious that we can’t continue living the way we have been. We can’t all just be angry every minute of every single day, since it’s quite self-defeatist, and I’m saying this as someone who has often felt victim towards his own anger. 

I’m sure there are lots of ways that the professionals (i.e. shrinks and therapists) would advise dealing with anger, and some of them might recommend medication to do so, but I’ve never been one to believe in drug-controlled emotions.  It kind of goes hand in hand with my moody nature and how it drives me creatively and in ways, also keeps me happy when I need to find ways to stay happy.

I’ve been writing for nearly 25 minutes about this topic and probably rambling and going off on a tangent for some of it but I already feel about 70% less angry now than I did when I started writing this, so I can definitely say I know myself and what works to get myself out of these moods I sometimes wake up to.

Hopefully, I can use the fact that I was able to get some of this anger out of my system to look towards other emotions over the rest of the day to feel like I’ve accomplished something more constructive, like you know, write that weekly column that takes up so much of my time every week. 

Yeah, I’m kind of in a mood today. If we’re friends on Facebook, you already know about the mouse problem I’ve been having that seems to be getting worse as I continue to stockpile a non-existent pantry with dry food to make sure I always have something to eat just in case some of my old reliable food sources in the neighborhood close down again. Maybe I’ve mentioned in one of these about the deli that closed or the pizza places (most if not all of them), the dumpling place, the Chinese markets where I get lots of my supplies and food suff at relatively inexpensive prices. March and April really put me in a place where I needed to change how I deal with making sure I have food to eat since so many of the once reliable places around me were closed due to COVID.

I ended up ordering a lot of dry food from Amazon -- CLIF bars, ramen noodles, Pop-tarts, etc -- just so I’d always have a supply of food without having to spend an exorbitant amount of money to order take-out through Seamless/GrubHub, which can tack on around $10 or more for tax, tips, delivery charges, etc.

I’ll be the first to admit that some of my choices in food may not have been great, and I’m well aware that Pop-Tarts and ramen is not the healthiest diet, and I got a LOT of advice on what I should be eating instead. How I should be doing this or that or another thing... cooking my own meals, rather than having processed food, etc.

I’ve had a mouse problem in my apartment and building since I moved in and that’s just a part of living in my area of Chinatown where there are a lot of food trading places and restaurants including a couple right on the ground floor of the building. Many but not all of them have been closed over the last few weeks, so the mice need to find food somewhere... and here’s my apartment with boxes of dry food including mac and cheese, etc. Score!

Now mind you, I don’t have a real patnry and even my shelf space is limited so I ended up with boxes of food sitting on the floor between my very small fridge and my mostly unusable stove. The thing is that I live in a studio apartment where literally everything is in the front room so my bed is about five feet from the aforementioned stove/refrigerator.  

So when a mouse decides that my stockpile is open game for its own appetite, I’m usually the first person to know about it. Mice are very noisy creatures who do not care who hears them nibbling on any food they can get their annoying little teeth on. I’ve frequently noticed the path of their nibbling destruction after the fact when I find things they’ve left behind... oddly, they seem to like ketchup.

Anyway, I noticed a bit of their remains earlier in the week and last night when I was awake around 5 in the morning, I actually caught one mouse jumping out of a box of mac and cheese and when I peered inside, I noticed that it had gnawed a tiny hole at the bottom of one serving (these are the plastic cups I can cook in the microwave). So I ended up spending about 15 minutes rearranging everything to make it harder for the mice to get into stuff and eventually went back to sleep.

I mentioned this on my FB page and a few friends gave me some free advice on killing mice and maybe I’m just in a testy mood but I kind of felt like I had to finally say, “I’m not asking for advice” because over the past six weeks, I’ve been getting a lot of “free advice” on things even when I’m not asking for any. Believe me, when I need advice, I ask and appreciate any suggestions. 

But I feel like for some reason in this pandemic, everyone is throwing out free advice from relatives to elected officials and it’s getting to be a little much for me. Believe me, I don’t need to hear every ten minutes how to wash my hands, something that the city seems necessary to run as PSAs during every commercial break. 

I also know full well the limitations of my lifestyle and the fact that I live in a shitty apartment since that’s the only way I could afford to live in New York City. Believe me, I’d love to have a nicer apartment, job, etc. etc.  But a lot of people who are offering me free advice have no idea that maybe the way they live is not the way I’ve been forced to live.

But also, I’ve been dealing with the mice in this building for over two decades and I’ve killed HUNDREDS! If it was just a matter of getting some traps, I would have already done this but... and I’ve mentioned this before... all the places in my neighborhood where I usually would buy traps are closed... some permanently and long before the COVID outbreak.

Maybe I’m a little pissy today due to the sleep I lost from this one pesky little mouse -- I’ve gotten used to wearing earplugs at night due to other noises in my neighborhood so at least I’m not kept awake by their nibbling as I’ve been in the past. But people who know me should know that I tend to like to kvetch about things, and that doesn’t mean that I need to hear people’s opinions or advice on what I should do about things. I’m well aware of all my resources, maybe more than others are.

I know this might sound a bit ungracious since I do have so many friends and acquaintances who mean well, but I also have family always telling me how I should live my life, and there are just some days (like today) when I probably shouldn’t say anything because any responses to what I say are just gonna annoy me as much as the problem. 

So yeah, I guess today’s #30MinuteExperiment is a bit more ranty and rambling than I like to make these, but hey, if you’re already reading these, then you already know that you can probably expect any one of my ever changing moods depending on what I’m feeling when I set aside the 30 minutes to write this.  Part of this is just getting it out of my system rather than just getting snippy with friends, family or co-workers but I’m just getting so much “free advice” thrown at me from the news and talk shows and anyone who thinks they know best for others that it finally has gotten to be too much for me after almost two months of it. 

Maybe I’m getting a little antsy about what’s going to happen over the next two months as nothing seems to be getting resolved in terms of fixing the bigger problems but yeah, a situation like a mouse is kind of minor right now. It’s something I know how to deal with even if every so often (like today) I feel the need to kvetch about it or the sleep I lost wondering how much I’ll have to do to dissuade this pesky critter from getting into my food supply. Again, it’s very very minor... but things like this tend to get exacerbated by people trying to be helpful, so yeah, that’s where I’m at as of this writing. 

I have to write my prison-bound pen pal and I might as well get this out of the way since I know that a mouse would seem fairly minor compared to his own situation, but I guess I didn’t have anything else to write about today and didn’t want to shirk my credo to do 30 minutes of straight writing. Thankfully, I only have a few minutes left of this #30Me which probably should be retitled “Free AdMICE” (ha ha) since I spent most of it talking about this one mouse, who I may actually name soon if I’m stuck in this tiny apartment for two more months with it.  Believe me, having vermin getting into my food supply with everything else going on in the world isn’t great but it’s also the least of my ever-growing concerns.

Anyway, i end today’s #30ME with this last bit of free advice... if you ever get the crazy idea to write for 30 minutes straight about any given topic and you decide to keep doing it, regardless of anyone is writing what you’re writing or not... don’t do it! 

That’s my free advice. 

It will surprise absolutely no one that I’m a bit of a workaholic and I’ve been one for most of my life. I think my first job must have been when I was 14 or 15 or so when I got a bicycle and started delivering newspaper, a job that I quite liked because it was a quiet suburban neighborhood in Westport where not a lot happened. (I do remember one day being flashed by an older woman who came to the door wearing absolutely nothing not realizing I was on the other side leaving her newspaper.)

One of the weird things going on in this pandemic is that after losing a writing gig I had just started, it gets harder and harder to push myself to do the much-needed work I have to do, whether it’s doing these #30Mes or writing my weekly Weekend Warrior column or cleaning or working on some of my long dormant screenplays or even writing to my imprisoned penpal (who I just got a letter from so I need to get back to him fairly soon.)

At a certain point, everything seems like work, even if it’s just scheduling time to hang out on Zoom with friends or family, which is something I did far less of in the days pre-pandemic (Can we maybe start a new numbering system so that 2020 is Year One and every year that follows would be 1 Post-Pandemic for 2021, etc? It feels suitable.)

But this whole time and even over the past four years I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to find some form of steady work, and sadly, things were so unstable pre-pandemic that it’s only gotten harder as more of my movie-writing colleagues are losing jobs and there are far more opportunities. I mean, anyone who reads my Weekend Warrior every week (or EVER!) will know that there are still movies being released, even if not all of them are getting any kind of theatrical release. Some of them are even quite good. 

I was talking to one of my colleagues last night about the work situation and how everything just came to a stop in March when most of us had things planned or in the works, which unfortunately revolved mostly around movies. 

But the current situation has become a great equalizer in terms of people needing to cover a lot more smaller indie movies, TV series and streaming stuff if they want to keep their jobs. I’m pretty sure that the job market is going to look very different in a few months as the country starts slowly reopening, and I think the people who don’t want to do the actual work like going to see movies and having varied tastes, won’t survive. They’ll just give up and go take one of those regular 9 to 5 desk jobs that are out there.

Believe me, I’ve been ready to make that transition for a couple years as I lost a lot of freelance outlets, some being closed, others just going in a different direction. It’s tough out there, and it’s really hard for me to take any sort of dog-eat-dog mentality when it comes to work, because I don’t like seeing my friends struggling. That hurts me almost as much as my own struggle (which I’m happy to say has taken an interesting and slightly positive turn this week).

Sure, I’m definitely ready to be done with this and to get back to work, even though it’s been some time since I’ve had any steady work hours -- probably the Tracking Board where I was doing a 9 to 5 shift five days a week -- and I’m going to have to get back into some of the good working habits. I already try to go to sleep at a reasonable hour and don’t stay up past midnight playing video games (or Android games) or doing some of the other distractions that would keep anyone else from getting work done.

I mean, if you read today’s Weekend Warrior, you’ll see that I spent a lot of time watching and writing about a bunch of movies just so that people will have some idea that there is good movie entertainment still coming their way which hopefully they’ll look into it. I don’t want to too far down the tangential wormhole of the movie biz right -- I’ll have plenty of time to talk about that over the next few months -- but the pandemic equalizer that I mentioned hasn’t really helped the smaller indie movies as I’d hoped since people still would rather throw on Netflix or Hulu or HBO and binge watch some show or another. 

I have a LOT of stuff that I’ve been meaning to watch but my desire to keep my brain in gear and stay motivated in terms of my writing has led to things like this experiment, which I’ve done a pretty good job keeping up with. If I really look at this to see how it helps me in terms of earning a living, I think I can say fairly that it’s a daily job that forces me to think and write quickly, which is something that’s important for most of the better writing jobs out there. And it only takes 30 minutes a day, so it’s not like it’s taking me away from any of the time-wasting activities I’d love to do instead.

Sure, I’m definitely trying to use this time productively even if the “work” I’m doing doesn’t do much to help me financially, although I will say that doing this stuff helps me both mentally and emotionally, which is half the battle when you’re dealing with a job and people you have to work with. I learned that the hard way at a few of my recent jobs post-CS, but I’m not going to get into all of that. I believe very strongly that sometimes you just have to do something to maintain your own mental health even when it’s not the best decision on the grand scheme of things.

I do miss having some of the structure of a job in my life even though I feel my calendar is just filling up with other things, even if it’s just doing things to help support my friend’s own mental and emotional health by taking part in their activities. Believe me, as much as the monotony of the day-to-day may have been getting to me a few weeks back, I feel like I’ve moved past that, and now I’m so focused and disciplined about getting things done, who knows? Maybe I’ll even have a few screenplays done by the time I’m allowed to go to a movie theater or press screening again.

I can only imagine how much harder this is for my friends and family who have gotten used to going to an office five days a week and have built their entire lives around that structure. Of my immediate family, only my sister and her husband and kids were doing anything in that vein, since both my brother and I have always been homebodies for the most part.

Right now, I’m not sure if I could even deal with going on the subway every day to go to a job, but thankfully, more businesses are figuring out how to stay running while allowing employees to work from home. At least as a writer, I don’t necessarily have to be anywhere, although as I’ve said before, I still prefer to see movies on the big screen... preferably without my own name watermarked across it. (This is done to avoid piracy, obviously, since it can be traced right back to me.)

Although I’m slowly inching towards a point in life where most people are ready to retire, I think I’ll be good to keep working in some capacity or other for at least the next ten years. The down time in between jobs these past few years has made it far easier for me to be thrifty so it’s no like I’m trying to support a ridiculous comic book habit anymore and have less need for consumerism. 

I can’t remember if I discussed during the “money” topic but I do feel better when i know i have money just in case I want to do something fun when that’s allowed again. There have been too many times in recent years where I’ve had to decline an invite to go somewhere just because I was worried about how even spending $20 might affect my ability to eat for that week. (Yes, things got that bad!)

I guess we’ll see where things go in the next few months, but I don’t think you’ll meet another person who is more than ready to go to work for 40 to 60 hours a week once again, since I’ve also gotten better at scheduling my time. I mean, it’s still not great but when it comes to working, especially as a writer, I feel that I’m always getting better at facing new challenges, and I do hope some will still come my way.

I have about five minutes left to go in today’s #30ME, and I’m not sure if I have that much more to say about “work” right at this moment, but I do want to say that if you got far into today’s ramble, I hope you’ll drop me a line with some suggestions and opinions. It doesn’t mean I will change what I’m doing since as I’ve said, these are more for me than anyone else, but it would be nice if someone is reading them and maybe it changes their opinion of me (hopefully in a favorable way). 

It’s May 5 as I write this, and it’s hard to believe that we’re getting almost to the two-month point where New York City was shutdown, and I’m not sure if I can honestly say that I’ve been using that time wisely. While I’ve spent 30 minutes each day doing this experiment and some other writing, I certainly haven’t spent as much time cleaning my apartment as I should have, and that’s while boxes of all sorts of dry food have piled up in my non-pantry i.e. a bit of floor space between my stove and refrigerator.

Yeah, I can’t say that my iiving situation isn’t great, and I know that regardless of how much I time cleaning and throwing stuff away (which i’ve done quite a bit of), I know that I would probably have to spend more like eight or nine hours a day to really make much of a mark on the piles of comics, DVDs and books I have accumulated. And that’s even with the number of same that were packed up by my brother along with two helpers about six years ago into boxes, that I haven’t really made much of an effort to go through. So yeah, it’s kind of a mess and I’m not sure how I got back into a similar hoarding problem I had seven years ago before I ended up in Ohio.  

If I were smarter and more focused, I’d start going through those boxes and figure out what to do with everything, but I’m understanding that a lot of places that used to take book and clothes donations aren’t doing so any longer due to the fears of COVID.

Right now I probably should be finishing up this week’s Weekend Warrior, which has turned into a bit of a beast with over a dozen movies being released digitally and me just not having the time or focus to watch all of them. I think I got through about six of the movies that I will write about although one of them has a Friday review embargo, so you’ll just have to follow me on Twitter to hear what I think about it, I guess. 

I’m not sure I’ve fully been able to acclimate myself to this new way of living and I’m still looking for some sort of steady gig, whether it’s writing or doing something else. I somehow got it into my head that I would be a good contact tracer, since I’m really interested in helping with this new essential job that’s necessary in our current pandemic-afflicted earth. I guess I really want to do something to help my city and state, as much as I’ve wanted to volunteer to help the LLS (Leukemia & Lymphoma Society) after my own battle with cancer. Nothing ever came out of that although I had spoken to someone about volunteering.

I find myself in this weird place where I know I need to make changes to my lifestyle, and I’m trying hard but it’s hard to get motivated when i don’t have as many of the releases that helped me deal with things... like movies and concerts.

I don’t want today’s #30Me to turn into a lot of “poor me” whining because I know there are a lot of people going through a much tougher time, whether it’s the front-line workers who are seeing so much death every day or other essential workers who are putting themselves in danger... but there’s also a lot of people who have been isolating and self-quarantining who do a lot of kvetching and complaining, and I certainly don’t want to be one of those.

Sure, I would love to get out and see some of my surrounding things reopen, being fully aware that movies and concerts will be a while, having been denoted to “Phase 4″ by New York’s Governor Cuomo. I mean, fair enough, but I really don’t think movie theaters are that dangerous places if they’re modified to allow social distancing and less contact with others. 

It’s funny because I’ve covered so much of what I’m rambling about in previous #30Mes, but it’s definitely getting frustrated that there doesn’t seem that much forward momentum in terms of my own world and what I need to do in order to survive and maintain some sort of sanity.

If you’ve been reading these for a while, you’ve already heard me praise Tim Burgess’ Tim’s Twitter Listening Parties, which involve listening to an album with a group of others while Tim (singer of The Charlatans) and his guests to discuss the making of the album and various songs with fans, both new and old. It’s really amazing how far these have gotten over the past few weeks as it went from one or two a day to up to six on Sundays, and he not only includes older classics from the ‘80s and ‘90s but also more recent artists, some I’ve never heard before like yesterday’s Foals listening session. I’m discovering so much more music that I love, and it’s putting me into this headspace where I feel like I want to do more with music, whether it’s writing about it or maybe even getting more involved with the making of music. (I’ve always thought I’d be a great A&R person but I’m not even sure how someone gets into that or if there are even that many jobs like that.)

In some ways, it’s kind of a drag that we’ve gotten hit by this debilitating pandemic at a time when I feel that I’m too old to reinvent myself, as I mentioned a few weeks back, but I’m also seeing my interests changing and feel like I need to follow the governor’s advice and try to come out of this a better person. I wonder how many of my friends and colleagues are feeling this way. 

So year, as with many of these “Free for All” #30Mes, I find myself starting to ramble a bit with the thoughts stumbling around my brain, but maybe putting them down in writing is what I need to remind and motivate myself if this keeps going the way it is for the next few months, which we know it will.

I’m not sure people realize how hard I try to be optimistic and thinking positive about the future even as I run into daily issues with my landlord or dealing with the Dept of Labor in an attempt to get some sort of unemployment or pandemic assistance, since I can’t even seem to find a job as an “essential worker.” Believe me, I’ve thought long and hard about doing something more constructive that can earn me a regular wage, but it must seem odd to those hiring for jobs that someone who has written for as long as I have might be willing to do something else, maybe something more menial, just to keep busy and earn some sort of steady paycheck.

Anyway, I’ve probably already shared way too many details about personal life, and I should use my final 9 minutes to start thinking about where I want this 30 Minute Experiment to go over the next month, especially as there seems to be more to write about in terms of movie stuff, and possibly some paid writing work. 

I’ve already asked a few times for suggestions for a topic that can allow me to flex my writing muscles and write about different topics, and I’ve received a few interesting suggestions. I guess we’ll see how long I can keep this going, because I do see it as a way to get my brain going every day as to not lapse into the monotony or lethargy that comes with sitting in my shitty apartment every day. 

At least the weather has started to get nicer and I can go up to my roof to enjoy some air and sunlight without concern for social distancing or having to wear a mask which makes it hard to get a “breath of fresh air.” I hope people understand that I’ve been through much of this before, and it’s frustrating to be back where I was in 2013, where I just had to figure out ways to get through my day and not get bored or depressed. I really have no idea how others are doing it, but I have very few friends who are going through this alone as I am.

So yeah, this has been a particularly reflexive and rambling edition of #30Me, so I better think up a couple better topics to get me through the rest of the week, especially if I’m going to keep doing this for some time, as I would like to.

So again, if you have any ideas for topics or feedback, feel free to reach out since I’m not sure how many people are reading these or what they think.

I will freely admit that I am not as knowledgeable about the comic industry as my former boss at ComicsBeat and some of her staff, who cover the comic industry in such great detail and who know so much about the ins and outs of the industry. Right now, comics books are generally in flux and I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. I’ve been someone who has bought and read comics regularly. I’ve also bought comics that I’ve never found time to read. I also have reached points where I couldn’t afford to buy comics at all. And then there’s that thing about selling off my 40-year collection last year for way below what I thought I’d get for it.

I’ve generally been reading comic books since I was 9 or 10 when I found a bunch of ‘70s Superman comics in a clubhouse near our new house in Framingham, Mass. As a rather impressionable kid, I was a fan almost immediately, and even to this day, if you find a kid who likes to read, you’ll find a kid who loves comic books. It’s just something that you can always count on with younger boys and girls... if you hand them a comic book, they will read it. 

I was no different but I became quite obsessed and spent most of the money I earned from various job when I was a teenager and even younger on comics and records, which led to all sorts of issues later in life when I was living in a tiny studio apartment in New York City and was forced to put a lot of my old collections into storage spaces that I eventually couldn’t afford.

But this isn’t about my past with comics and about the future. I’m not sure if you’re aware or even if you’re somebody who still regularly reads and/or collects comics, but shortly after the pandemic struck the States, Diamond Distributors had to shut its doors. The problem was that Diamond was the top distributor of comic books from the publishers to the comic book stores. Even though there were many comics in the works to come out in April, May and June, on April 1, that distribution system just stopped dead and there was no way for the big three, DC Comics, Marvel Comics and Image Comics to get their comics out to the masses. The entire economy of the comic business quickly ground to a halt with no way for stores to pay for comics, no way for Diamond to properly and safely distribute them and very few stores actually open to sell them. At least that was the case in New York where a giant like MIdtown Comics had to close up as it wasn’t considered an essential business.

I felt a little mixed on this because I’ve already tried to quit buying and reading comics a few times over the past few years. In 2018, I thought I had reached a point where I could no longer afford to buy them nor have time to read them even while most of my time was spent looking for jobs rather than doing them. When I couldn’t afford to keep up my mail order subscriptions, I took the opportunity to stop. I then found myself having to get rid of my expensive storage spaces and that gave me another opportunity to quit. That was February 2019 and in the exact same month, I started writing for The Beat, and let’s just say that it’s hard to work for one of the top comic book sites on the planet and NOT be interested in what is happening in comics.

I vowed to keep things in control in terms of my spending and for the most part, I was able to do so, although I still have a lot of unread comics piled up near and around my bed that i just haven’t taken the time to read, especially with so many other distractions during the pandemic.

It’s now been a full month without comics and I still have plenty to read if I want to, but DC Comics have already started to come back slowly and Marvel will soon follow suit. Neither company is releasing nearly as many comics as they did in March when both companies would release 30 to 50 (or even comics) of all types and varieties. There’s just no way for someone with a limited income to keep up with it all so I feel like the pandemic closures gave me another opportunity to get out of my buying and non-reading habits. So I’ve written quite a bit about the topic of “the future of comics” without actually addressing it head-on, and maybe I’m a little biased, but my good friend David Lloyd had the best plan when he came up with the idea for Aces Weekly, which is a digital-only comic book site that offers brand-new comics that have never been seen anywhere else but only in a digital serialized format. No printing costs, no waste of paper... but some of the best comic book storytelling and art working out there that just hasn’t caught on as well as all of the usual superheroics from DC and Marvel who have also made the jump to digital.  What I like about Aces Weekly is that it reminds me of the Heavy Metal of my youth, stories that were in different genres than the usual superheroes, whether it’s sci-fi or fantasy or horror or even comedies. Part of why I got into David’s own work originally was because I regularly read his series V for Vendetta with Alan Moore when it was published in Warrior Magazine. In fact, having to get rid of my collection of original Warrior Magazines was one of the many heartbreaks from Midtown getting my entire collection for way below what I thought it was worth. (I probably shouldn’t bring that up again because it really puts me in a mood.)

But David did have something write that’s perfect for the post-pandemic world and that’s that if consumers are still relying on having physical books in print and there’s still a possibility of COVID-19 potentially being spread via packaging and shipping of such books... then yeah, we just have to go digital. I mean, everyone has a computer nowadays and most people have phones or tablets as well. Aces Weekly was designed beautifully to work in the landscape formatting that we’ve become so accustomed to from computers, TVs and tablets. It was never meant to be read on smartphones as that would destroy the beauty of the artwork and the sequential storytelling which is meant to be read as one does a comic strip in the Sunday papers (which still probably get more readers than the average comic book).

It’s kind of a strange time because comic books are more popular than ever due to the huge amount of superhero and comic book movies that have come out over the past 20 years, both good and bad. The success of these movies, particularly those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has made it for publishers to get comic books into avid younger readers who want to know more about the heroes they seen on screen. 

And yet, there’s still a big glut of comics being released that aren’t of the greatest quality and are kept around just because someone in editorial thinks that readers want these books. 

We’ve already seen a lot of comics going to digital services and a resulting outcry of comic book stores who realize that some people might be fine reading the stories in that format, thereby cutting out the middle men, but I personally still prefer physical comics, mainly because I can just sit back and read something without the use of technology and the screens that I’m looking at for so many hours over the course of the day.

Sure, I can’t really afford physical comic books and don’t really have the space to store them, plus I’m always in danger of them taking over my apartment and my ability to live comfortably, a constant problem, but I also wonder why more publishers haven’t gone the direction of David’s Aces Weekly and just created a solid product that involves great storytelling, writing and art and just rid the need for printing and paper, which is a bit of an ecological nightmare when you realize that comics are rarely recycled and are frequently just piling up in someone’s closet or backroom as a “collection.”

We’ve reached a point in technology where digital comics should very much be the standard and unfortunately that means that comic book shops need to change with the times and not be as beholden to having huge stocks of comics and toys taking up real estate just for those who show up and want to look around who may have some spare cash to buy something they clearly don’t need. Heck, most comic shops seem to do better business with Funko Pops and statues than actual comics these days so maybe they should be converted into toy or hobby shops... but with a knowledgable staff who can point those who want to read to sites/publishers that offer digital comics.

It’s kind of weird writing this on the day after what would have been this year’s Free Comic Book Day and what would have been the start of the summer movie season with Marvel Studios’ Black Widow, their first movie since Spider-Man: Far from Home  last July, but it seems we’re also at a very clear turning point where now is the time to change things to rid ourselves of the issues (pun intended) that have plagued us, like consumerism, the ecological nightmare that we’ve turned our globe into by destroying trees, and so many other things that physical comic books as they’ve existed for 80 years or more have only contributed to rather than helping us to get away from those issues.

This is probably gonna be one of the more personal #30MEs and will probably allow me to get rather introspective. It’s odd that I’d be thinking so much college in the past few years especially while trying to find a decent job, because some of you may know while others may not... but I never went to college. I can come up with so many excuses in hindsight, but the true fact is that in my last year of high school, I was a bit of a slacker and I was already kind of fed up of classes and school so the idea of spending four more years or more doing school just wasn’t something I could get too excited about.

I mean, I had thought about going to some place like the Berklee College of Music so that I could continue doing music stuff, but I wasn’t really sure what I would do other than maybe learn more about music theory or arranging or something to that effect, and I had just spent three years in high school studying music pretty effectively, and I wasn’t that big a fan of being taught how to make music. I felt that it was something that needs to come from your heart and soul and being told what you can or can’t do while making music just seemed foreign to my own feelings about music. Maybe that was a bad choice not to try to do something but I’m not sure how much having a music degree would be helping me nowadays in terms of finding a job.

A lot of this does have to do with looking at job listings every day trying to figure out what I can do next and realizing that so many of these jobs expect candidates to have at least a bachelors degree, something that i never bothered getting. And yes, there have been points in the last 30X questions since I graduated high school where I thought of going back to school or taking some courses, but there were always things like time and money that held me back.

Sure, not a great excuse, especially in what’s happening now and the fact that so many colleges and universities have offered online classes for credits for many years. Believe me, I’ve had this fact shared with me many times over the past few years, but I’ve never been able to determine what I might want to study at my advanced age and how putting myself into further debt might help.

I have plenty of friends who changed their course of training to get into other fields when they were in their 40s and 50s, but I’m just not sure I have the commitment and focus and interest to do something like this. It’s not like I expect myself to live forever and right now, I’ll just be happy if I can see 60, since I think that would be a nice milestone to end on, but I feel that I would be better using those last five years in other ways.

Now, mind you, I’ve done a pretty good job getting writing work without ever having studied any sort of writing in high school or college. (Heck, I may have mentioned how I failed high school English in my junior year just because I had no interest in writing a thesis paper on dolphins. That gives you some idea how much more stubborn as a youth than I am now... and I’m pretty damned stubborn!)

Yeah, I’ve been very lucky in the jobs I’ve been able to get without having a degree, but most of my last few gigs have been through friends or friends recommending me. I’m not sure that spending four years of college and adding thousands more debt to my register would have helped other than having that one extra thing on my resume than I have now.

I should mention that I did go to a trade school for recording and engineering at the Institute of Audio Research in 1987, which is what brought me to NYC in the first place. That gave me an in to the New York studio system that allowed me to work on music recording and production projects that I mostly enjoyed doing, but I also found myself very frustrated with the music business and how hard it was to get past a certain point, which clearly I never got past. When I had a chance to get out of music, I did, and even after returning to it briefly, I eventually just bailed on the whole thing as I found that I could get work writing... up until a point. Which is where I’ve been for the past few years.

Sure, it’s easy to look back and think about all the things I would have done different. Maybe if I wasn’t so afraid of writing an essay or thesis in order to apply for most of the colleges I was interested in at the time, I may have actually sent out more applications, which most people in high school were doing in their last couple years. In part, I never was really pushed my mother or father to do these things, and I love them for allowing me to find my own way... but maybe they should have pushed me more? 

Then again, I also had seen my older brother being eaten up and spit out by his early experiences off on his own at college and I knew that he was a LOT stronger than I was at that time. I mean, he eventually found his way, found his wonderful wife and is generally happy as a beekeeper right now.

By my last few years in high school, I was playing in bands, some that actually made money (though that’s a story for another time) but I just couldn’t see myself spending four years in college learning scales or trying to improve my playing as a saxophonist or keyboard player, things that I was doing a lot of in those last few years of high school.

At that time, I thought I’d just take a year off before thinking about college and that year off is still going on to this day as I began working and getting jobs as a cook, and that was enough to keep me being able to buy comics and records. That continued once I got to New York and started working in recording studios, but that also led to frustration and disappointments that I’d need way more than 30 minutes to get into.

I guess this is an even more reflexive #30ME than usual, but I guess I’m finally having some regrets about not going to college like everyone else in my family and around me. (I only just found out very recently that my long-time friend and short-term boss never went to college either, something I never would have realized since we never spoke about it.)

Anyway, I’m sure I’ll get out of this current funk that’s affecting a lot more people than just, including many who went to college and then spend decades paying off the debt that incurred. I also should point out that my credit has gotten so bad over the past few decades that I doubt I could even get funded if I did decide I should go back to school, and even if I did, what on earth would I want to study? Writing? Editing? Journalism? Music? I’ve been doing all of that stuff and I was perfectly happy to learn by doing, which is how I’ve gone through most of my life. 

When you get to a certain age, you’ve learned so much in life from just doing and failing until you do something right and can continue going that route, but I’ve also learned the hard way that finding a job gets a lot harder when you’re older if you can’t say, “Yeah, I went to college 20/30 years ago and I’m sure that will make a big difference on how well I can do in this job.”

It’s pretty frustrating so I’m glad I only have.... 8 MINUTES LEFT?!?!? ... to write on this subject. Sigh. Why did I decide on doing this experiment again? At least some topics (like yesterday’s), I have a lot of thoughts and feelings that I can crank out 30 minutes without blinking. I guess looking back at something like college is a lot tougher since it means that i have to admit that not going to college was a decision I made when I was younger and more impulsive that really didn’t pan out or pay off. It means admitting failure way too late to actually do something about it.

Listen, I’m glad I did what I did in terms of taking a 9-month course in recording and engineering even if I barely used any of the things I studied similar to the fact that the only thing I got out of taking algebra and high school in calculus is that it sometimes helps with a crossword puzzle answer or two.

Who knows? Maybe writing about this will push me to explore some courses of study or learn a few new things that might be useful and applicable to the current state of the world. (I mean, I just applied for a job as a tracer and I tried using my skills as a writer to emphasize my traits and skills that would make me qualified for the role even without the medical background and schooling that seems expected from candidates. Don’t expect much to come out of that application.)

I could probably talk more about college and some of the other negatives I perceived both before and after to justify my decision not to go (like the fact that so many went to college just to party and be free of their parents, which I managed to do without the partying, the debt or any of the other bad things that come along with college.) I was able to get a lot of the benefits of college by just making myself being open to meet and become friends with new people when I had a chance. I feel like my friends and acquaintances are a lot more varied due to my decision to explore different avenues and interests rather than spending 4 years in school. Honestly, I haven’t talked to others about their own college experiences to find out how it made a difference in their own lives. 

I feel like there’s just so much of a balance between the positives and negatives with college and many of these I just have no way  of seeing 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, especially when I was younger.

So yeah, I’m definitely on the forefront of people who really want to be back in a theater or even a screening room seeing movies again. Unlike so many people out there, I don’t have a giant display screen or a home theater or anything that allows me to have any sort of satisfactory experience watching movies at home. I mean, I do it because sometimes the job entails it. When I wrote reviews for Film Journal, MOST of the movies I was reviewing were only available to review via screener link and many of them would barely get a theatrical release. In some cases, my review was and maybe still is the ONLY review of that movie on RottenTomatoes. That’s how small these movies are.

As the various politicians in Washington and our own state and local politicians try to figure out how to reopen the economy, there’s only one thing I want to know and that’s when theaters will be able to reopen, when all those hard-working and under-appreciated people like the projectionists and ticket takers will be able to get back to work. But more importantly, when can we all get back to seeing movies in theaters safely?

As many probably know, I’m not one of those guys who necessarily needs to go see a movie on a crowded Thursday or Friday night among the first audiences. I didn’t get to see Avengers: Endgame until the Tuesday after opening for some reason, maybe cause I wanted to see it in IMAX in the same theater I saw Avengers: Infinity War.

I’m used to going to movies and press screenings where there are just a handful of people there and there’s so much social distancing already that it shouldn’t be a concern. I’ve been perfectly fine going to the movies and not having anyone sitting around me for years now so it’s not like I need to cozy up to some stranger now anytime soon.

A few of the things that happened in the last couple days included a bit of a war of words between AMC (the biggest theater chain in the country and in the NYC area), NATO (the organization that runs the entire theater franchise) and Universal Pictures, who chose to skip a theatrical release for a few of their films including this month’s Trolls World Tour and June’s The King of Staten Island (which was supposed to premiere at SXSW and play Tribeca). As you probably know, a lot of the festivals have already been cancelled or going virtually in order to provide content, support the filmmakers and themselves while still allowing viewers to be safe. 

It just so happens that the day after this feud, John Fithian, the head of NATO spoke with Variety (no idea how long ago this was conducted) about the situation, which you can read here:

https://variety.com/2020/film/features/theaters-reopening-plan-coronavirus-john-fithian-1234592228/

(Also, a very angry friend of mine went off on social media about the very idea of movie theaters being up and running by July, but I’m not gonna call him or her out as I know where they’re coming from, and I consider him/her a dear friend.

So I’m gonna talk about some of the issues and how they can be handled even while hundreds of theaters owners and representatives from NATO and the movie studios are probably having these very discussions on how to reopen movie theaters safely.

First of all, if Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is the first big studio movie that will be released on July 17 (which is 12 weeks a way, give or take?) followed by Disney’s Mulan the following week, that gives those involved a LOT of time to make sure everything is safe and that numbers have come down appropriately before reopening. Remember that a lot of this is being determined by the governors of various states as well as local politicians and the CDC. Things are being rolled out in phases. 

Let’s just assume that movie theaters might be Phase 2 or 3 and in New York, I doubt we’ll see those phases before June. Still, that gives theaters a lot of time to figure things out.

The big concern is that a packed theater will mean no social distancing. Well, you know what? You don’t have to have packed theaters. Just sell 25-50% of the tickets depending on the size of the theater, and with reserved seats being the norm these days, it’s mostly easy enough to figure out how to make sure people are watching movies safely by alternating seats and spreading the audience out across the theater.

This might be a problem for places like my dear, beloved and much-missed Metrograph since their smaller theater only holds 54 people and when it’s full, it is PACKED. Then again, I’ve also seen press screenings when there’s only five or six of us in there and it’s comfortable and safe. It might be a bigger problem when they premiere movies in there with guest QnAs. That’s definitely going to be one of the first problems the owners of Metrograph will have to figure out, but they also have a restaurant upstairs and make a good amount of money from events that are equally packed. I mean, you can barely get around at some of those events when the 150-180 seat theater lets out.

But most of these theaters have reserved seating and the ones in New York that don’t like the Film Forum and Quad Cinema... they’ll just have to figure out a way to block off or remove seats  or make it a little more dummy proof for their patrons, who are often older folks who might be in the worst danger if infected by COVID.

Limiting seating also leads to other issues because it’s not just a matter of having one seat open, then block off every other seat. You have to remember that couples and groups of friends want to go to movies together, and listen, these groups are going to get together to do other things regardless of whether they’re expected to social distance or not. They’re young people and they want to hang out. There’s also the consideration of families. Are you gonna make some three-year-old sit six feet away from their parents, and then separate them as well? No, that’s just silly.  What can be done is that you can sell reserved seats in groups so if someone is buying just one ticket, they’ll have a selection of single seats. If there are two people going together, they can buy a block of two. Families? They can buy a block of four or six or whatever’s needed. This isn’t that hard and concessions can and will have to be made. 

I feel like theaters were already taking some precautions like wiping down seats and limiting seating even BEFORE things went completely crazy and so far, no one has come forward and said that it was specific movie theaters that caused CORONA to spread even more rampantly in NYC. The last movie I saw in theaters was The Invisible Man in a moderately full 200 seat theater on a Saturday afternoon, and the theater (which had those reclining seats) already had so much separation between patrons that it was relatively comfortable and didn’t feel packed or unsafe. I’m not really sure what places like the Alamo or Nitehawk will do since they also serve food and anyone who’s gone to either one knows that two people next to each other share a table. Sometimes, at more crowded screenings, you’re sharing a table with a strange and you’re sitting WAY TOO CLOSE. Again, just sell tickets in blocks. If you’re going solo, then you’ll have a number of choices, and if you’re going as a couple, you can share a table. 

This idea gets a little more complicated when you realize that most regular moviegoers like to sit in certain seats. Like I prefer an aisle seat and not too far back either but also not right at the screen. This adds another issue when people are as picky as I am and don’t want to be stuck in the middle of a row (or want to be in the middle) and don’t want to be too close or too far back. Again, these are all easy things to figure out and I’m sure it wouldn’t take much tinkering with the technology to make it work in the way it needs to work.

At this point, there really shouldn’t even be a need for ticket sellers unless someone can only pay in cash (which I’m sure is a thing) and I’m sure concessions can be made to sell tickets safely even if it’s a matter of there being plexiglass in front of the ticket seller who will have to wear gloves and mask while dealing with customers. Honestly, we should be at a point where everyone has a smart phone or a printer at home where they can just bring that to be scanned... and scanners can wear gloves and masks as well. You have to realized that 90% of the day, especially in hours where I go to see movies, there is so little business that the people who work at a theater can safely take off their masks... there’s also this thing called testing which is continuously being ramped up and I’m confident that some of the ideas being thrown out there (like having temperature scanners making sure no one might have a fever).

The way to deal with smaller theaters where you can’t really do much social distancing? Just play movies on more screens so that an audience that might fill five medium size theaters would be spread out over a bigger space... Oh, damn. My timer just went off which means I’ll have to continue this subject at another time.