Monday, April 21, 2008

The Nightmare!
Good afternoon from the iPhone of a sleeping Wall Street-type on the bus. Our internet's been down at the house all week, during which Chestnut swore he'd sent the Comcast check. A further search of his desk revealed one unsent check and one missing and presumed mailed page of How I Met Your Mother fan fiction.

I'm pleased to present our newest short, The Nightmare. Tumble says you should watch the crap out of it.

Here's the hi-res Quicktime version.

Here's the Myspace Video version:

Enjoy!

F

posted @ 05:53 PM est [link] [more]

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Screeningings

Hello friends. After a long spell of bloglessness, I have some news. Movie Night has been invited to screen at the South By Southwest film festival this year in Austin Texas.
Here's the SXSW listing.

Another short is on its way. Hm? Oh, yes. Tumble says it's some of his best work. Then again, I've heard him say that pouring cereal.

F
posted @ 05:22 PM est [link] [more]

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Movie Night!
Greetings from the raspy throat and throbbing head of a person that spent the better portion of an evening huddled around a player piano drinking his landlord's trademark "Kahluatinis" and singing at the top of his lungs. (Our landlord Phil had gathered Tumble, Chestnut and I together to celebrate his completion of a hand-punched piano roll of Exile On Main Street). But I have digressed.

After talking about it nonstop, may I now please present to you a short entitled "Movie Night":

Fish Out Of Water: Movie Night

I have recently started a myspace page that will be my main focus and the repostitory for new shorts and other things, so please bookmark it! www.myspace.com/fishoutofwatersite

posted @ 12:35 PM est [link] [more]

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Screenings!

Hello everyone. For those of you that missed its premiere at the Labrat Matinee, a new short of mine entitled "Movie Night" will be screening again at The Standard on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles this Sunday, June 24 at 9pm. It's wonderfully inexpensive, I've been informed. Valet parking is only $5 and admission is free, plus there are drink specials.

Being 3000 miles away and unable to attend, Tumble, Chestnut and I will be holding our own screening in solidarity, lugging the tv out into the backyard to watch Ladyhawke (Chestnut won the coin toss) amongst the lightning bugs. Our landlord Phil has promised to join us and provide the festivities with homemade OFF!

All for now,
-F
posted @ 12:05 PM est [link] [more]

Monday, June 4, 2007

Festival News!
Hello everyone. Just a quick note to mention that an all-new Fish short will be opening the Dublab Labrat Matinee this upcoming Sunday, June 10th at the Little Temple in Los Angeles!

A couple of my blog shorts, including Scarface, will also be screening as well as amazing comedy clips from Bob Odenkirk, Tim and Eric, Maria Bamford and others; music videos from Arcade Fire, Deerhoof, The Books, Blonde Redhead and something like thirty other bands.

For those of you not familiar with the Labrat Matinee, its a festival of incredible underground shorts and music videos with DJs, drinks and free popcorn, presented by dublab and The Onion.

After discovering that the folks at the Labrat Matinee used a photo for the flyer featuring only myself, a jealousy-riddled Tumble whipped up his own flyer, which at this moment he is FedExing to Chestnut's sister in Los Angeles to distribute:

posted @ 12:41 PM est [link] [more]

Saturday, May 26, 2007

A Cup of Determination in a Metric Ton of Doubt
Hello from the frayed knuckles of a despondent typist. I made another wager with Tumble in a fit of bravado, declaring once again that I could write a short story given any title. Tumble took seventy-two careful hours and came up with the doozy Adventure!: The Barfening of Shitsbury. Needless to say, my creative well has evaporated and my brain started sobbing ten minutes ago. Satsifaction practically emanates from his room down the hall.

Grogan Tumble himself has been hunched over his cabling spool coffee table, jotting down ideas with fevered inspiration.

He got it in his head to come out with a line of motivational calendars. So far, I've only gotten a chance to glimpse months January through March:

I personally can't wait to see December. I found a crumpled up idea in his wastebasket that simply read, "I hate you, Santa."

All for now,

F
posted @ 08:45 PM est [link] [more]

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt.
Greetings from a desk.

As the month of April stumbles off into the past like a lovesick wino trying to recall the name of a grade-school crush and tie his bike-chain-belt at the same time, I've been trying my hardest to keep myself immersed in work to plug up whatever holes have been worn into the lobes of my noggin by depressions past and present.

Tonight, between the ingestion of a particulary potent bottle of bottom-shelf liquor and a half-crazed late-night Heath Bar run, I came up with another page for Love is a Drowsy, Retarded Turtle, the children's book I've been writing on-and-off for a couple years:

Chestnut's voice mumbles through the walls at this late hour, preparing for a trip to the Altoona office tomorrow morning. I can barely make out a muffled "Onde está o café o mais próximo?" (Chestnut downloaded Portuguese lessons to his iPod in order to impress a Brazillian toll collector he remembers from six months ago).
From the other wall, the muted dual guitars of Thin Lizzy's Cowboy Song wrap themselves around my roommate's warbled yell-singing as Tumble, fresh off a telephone call where his sister advised him to grow up and "get a real job," has holed himself in his room sipping single-malt scotch and designing a treehouse.

It's been three weeks almost since we lost a man who helped me understand the world better than my own two eyes could ever do alone. And tonight I still don't very much feel like writing. I feel like sitting at my desk, drawing assholes in marker or painting unwavering bands of light, anything to compensate for the closing of one great, great man's portal somewhere over Manhattan.

So I think I'll sign off here and hope that someone somewhere understands the world like no one else ever has and is at this moment putting pen to paper to let us in on it.

-F

posted @ 01:39 AM est [link] [more]

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

The Frost Has Been Burned Off This Author's Weathered Heart

Spring has whisked its way into our enclave and set right what was once a matted mess of human misery. This past Saturday saw our three formerly hapless selves take in breakfast smoothies and a jaunt in our local park. Our fun was only briefly interrupted when Chestnut's wheatgrass shot started to kickbox his lower GI, forcing him to wait for a vagrant taking a paper towel bath to free up the restroom.

Sometime early yesterday a stircrazy Tumble breathed in a lungful of 72-degree spring air and set to building a miniature golf course in the backyard. (An initially reluctant Landlord Phil enthusiastically lent Tumble his post-hole digger after seeing the schematics for the ambitious "Pit of Screaming Hellfire" on the 17th hole.) Chestnut has been taking vacation days and lounging on Phil's roof, regaling him with office gossip while Phil tends to his pot seedlings.

And just today I started working on a new short story. I won't tell you anything about it now, except to say it's about a sniper with asthma.

The world that once laid waste to our hopes and dreams now intoxicates us with promise and wonder, if only to set up more hopes and dreams for a spectacular dashing. It's like a wonderful theme park ride that leaves you penniless and crippled, deliriously screaming for more as you claw your way back into the line. But enough of my silly jottings. Tumble has just called from the backyard to get my opinion on whether or not he's struck a gas main.

-F

posted @ 01:26 AM est [link] [more]

Saturday, February 17, 2007

A Fine, Fine Rut
It's taken some time nursing myself back to face-the-world form, but as Neil Young once sung, "an ambulance can only go so fast." (Tumble and I played that side of On The Beach nonstop for a solid weekend during our ongoing depressfest. He called the Guinness people with news of our accomplishment and was met with the world's record for indifference).

Tumble has been keeping himself busy most days by talking on the phone with his homesick grandmother in Phoenix and sending her pictures of a Pittsburgh winter.

Chestnut, meanwhile, has returned from his business trip on a mission. While recording a kissing scene for the audio book a while back, Chestnut sensed a moment between himself and Tumble's sister.

To Tumble's credit, he noticed it, too.

Gathering up all musterable courage, Chestnut asked her out on a Valentine's date and was flatly rejected due to her burgeoning infatuation with the stage manager of a local production of The Fantasticks. Chestnut has since caromed into our collective mope, contributing vital manpower to snack retrieval and DVD changing. It's good to see the household united, even if it is just three sad sacks nestled firmly in a rut letting life in all its glory soldier on.
posted @ 11:17 PM est [link] [more]

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Okay, so where were we.

Greetings from the eye of a three-and-a-half-week depression sustained only by the fumes of delivery food, alcohol, LPs and TV-on-DVD. Things, as they say, have been better.

Early this month, Carly left the melodrama that was her time in Pittsburgh and moved back to St. Paul, leaving one two-foot-eleven individual with a gaping hole in his ever-so-fragile heart.
Around the same time, a sensible junior exec at Prentice/McTiernan Publishing decided to cancel the audio book version of Hello Future Me... ...Hi There since we'd managed to record only chapters 2, 4 and 27 before the studio kicked us out.
Shortly thereafter your faithful author ensconsed himself in a foxhole of Pabst cans and refrigerator-cool spring rolls to wait out a heady squall of emptiness and melancholia the likes of which are spoken of in hushed tones by Western Psych interns on coffee break.

Along for the ride is Grogan P. Tumble, on paid leave after administrators noticed their best substitute teacher had overworked himself into what could only be described as a case of the "I-don't-give-a-shits" (Rumor has it he showed up to a class in shower slippers and told everyone the world had it in for them before leaving to take a nap in his car). He has been a misery Sherpa of sorts, going on taco reconnaissance when supplies are low and breaking out his crate of superduper heartbreaking vinyl from Cohen to Ochs. Chestnut, on a business trip since week two, just called to ask why the answering machine message had been changed to a garbled duet of The Earth Died Screaming sung by Tumble and myself at the top of our lungs.

Tumble has just popped in disc two of Cheers Season Three, and if we're to reach the Kirstie Alley years by daybreak, we must get a-watchin'. And if we're to endure them, Tumble has pointed out, we must get a-drinkin'. My best to you, from the face of the earth I've dropped off.

-F
posted @ 12:41 AM est [link] [more]

Friday, January 5, 2007

New Year's Newness Now Old
With Chestnut in Michigan visiting relatives, Tumble and I settled in for a quiet New Year's Eve of Parcheesi and beer (our landlord Phil had made us promise to keep it low-key this year after last year's homemade-fireworks-on-the-roof party drew six squad cars and the borough chief).

At about quarter to eleven, just as Tumble was preparing to light a fleet of ground spinners in the kitchen sink, Carly called and asked if she could join our festivities since her plans had fallen through. I said yes, of course, and she showed up twenty minutes later with homemade herb gnocci and sugar-chili prawns. We welcomed the new year with full bellies and ringing ears (Tumble couldn't resist lighting one Black Cat indoors).

Shortly after 1am while Tumble was out on Yuengling run we heard a commotion out back. Carly's ex-boyfriend J.C. had followed her to the house. A camera-happy neighbor caught the crux of it, which I found on YouTube this morning:

There's something about watching a man's soul desintegrate that makes you just plain exhausted.

posted @ 02:38 PM est [link] [more]

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Xmasness

A gentle, quiet evening has descended on the neighborhood and I, the sole remaining occupant of 120 Linden this Christmas Eve, have settled in for a wintry night, curled up in the living room with a bottle of wine and Chestnut's iPod.

Chestnut phoned me a few hours ago from his folks' place to report that his half-blind great aunt had unwrapped the PSP Chestnut had bought for his cousin and he was presently gathering up the courage to swipe it from the jaws of her Dachsund. Tumble is spending Christmas Eve with his sister watching the Nutcracker Suite on PBS and texting me repeated requests to end his life. I'm going to head up to Erie tomorrow morning and visit with my adoptive parents, bringing along braised wild duck which Carly in her infinite kindness made for me to take after my third attempt at a casserole was hurled feeble and smoldering into the garbage disposal.

As is the case every year, one of our neighbor's luminaria across the street has caught fire, sending a gentle flicker of light through our picture window. It's a drowsy, wonderful evening, the kind that puts worries in suspension and plans on hold, one that makes you want to close your laptop and stare out the window at the street alive in its emptiness.

posted @ 08:33 PM est [link] [more]

Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Tales from the Booth

Tuesday night we toiled in the acoustically deceased confines of a recording studio, hammering out the audiobook version of Hello Future Me... ...Hi There. Along to add to the recorded glory was Tumble's sister Imogene, who would play the parts of Officer Daniels' Daughter, Woman #1, Woman #2, and Old Lady Passerby.

I summoned my sturdiest narrator voice and read all the non-dialogue. After a couple marathon readthroughs, I realized my writing was so flowery and overly descriptive it made a Tom Robbins book read like a caveman telegram. I promised myself to lay off the thesaurus after I realized I'd used four different words for "corn".

While Chestnut and Tumble were setting up for their parts, I excused myself and went in the hall to check a voicemail. It was Carly, who had just gotten back from the Meadowlands racetrack where her ex-boyfriend J.C. had taken her for lunch to try and win her back. Carly had to spring for her own ride home after J.C. parlayed a $2-to-place bet into a $10,000 pick-6 and spent the rest of the afternoon at the Responsible Gaming booth crying to the counselor on call.

I made a mental note to phone her back after we wrapped and returned to the studio, where Tumble was reading dialogue for R.A.S.P.U.T.I.N. (Remote-Access Space Probe Utility Transponder Interface Nexus) the on-board computer in 2023.

A few minutes later, the audio engineers left on lunch and never came back.
posted @ 02:07 PM est [link] [more]

Saturday, December 2, 2006

A Voice From Not-So-Distant Recentness
Yesterday, while conducting a conference call between the publisher and a hideously lost Grogan Tumble (who had volunteered his courier services the microsecond I'd finished uttering the words "advance check"), I was interrupted by an incoming-call beep. I looked at my phone which displayed two words I thought I'd never see again:

Carly Calling.

I let Prentice/McTiernan Publishing help Tumble figure out how to get back from Wheeling, West Virginia and took the call. Frankly, she could have dialed my number by accident and I would have been happy just to hear her hang up. Carly meant to call, it turns out, and needed someone to talk to. Her ex-boyfriend was back in town, a poker-circuit crony who'd come out with his own line of instructional DVDs a couple years back:

It was a nasty relationship that he was all-too-ready to rekindle, and Carly didn't know what to do. I talked with her for hours, offering advice and comfort, and receiving in return a glimpse of the magic that was our whirlwind romance-in-disguise. We promised to get a cup of coffee in the near future and ended the call just as Tumble made it through the front door, check in hand.

After a brief household conference, Chestnut and Tumble and I decided to spend the advance check on some top-shelf barley wine, reupholstering the sofa, and seasons 1-3 of The Wire.
posted @ 12:29 PM est [link] [more]

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Aid From An Alternate Tumble
Our big audio-book recording day lumbers ever closer with legs of anticipation and feet of palpable nervous tension. Tumble has currently taken over the living room, hard at work on his costume for his role as the on-board computer R.A.S.P.U.T.I.N. in 2023.

After having Chestnut and our landlord Phil read for the multiple women's roles and fail miserably at sounding the least bit authentic, I phoned Tumble's sister Imogene in Ambridge, PA and she agreed to perform our lady characters for us, provided the three of us come see her in a regional theater performance of Tony and Tina's Wedding. After finding out about said bargain, Tumble vowed to poison me in my sleep, but not before acknowledging that his sister sounded a lot better than Phil's unsettling Betty Boop-like falsetto.
posted @ 04:08 PM est [link] [more] [more] [more]