10/30/2026

Greetings ghosts and ghouls, and a happy Devil’s Night to all!

Just checking in! I always feel particularly festive during the end of the year: Halloween leads into Thanksgiving/my birthday, and those lead into Christmas, which leads into New Years Eve so my spirits are generally pretty high (although I will confess there is always a tinge of sadness to all of the holidays – grief doesn’t let up on holidays, as I think anyone who has ever lost someone special to them will tell you).

As I stated, it is Devil’s Night, and for me, that usually means a viewing of The Crow. I am doing my best to kind of smash it in there just for the sake of tradition!

I am sad to confess that I haven’t really done much the past few Halloweens in terms of going out or dressing up. I’ve spent the last two or three Halloweens with Grams watching scary movies (it’s the one night that she will relent and agree to watch spooky stuffs, but she still bad mouths them, especially my favorite Halloween)! So that might be the play again!

I’ve compiled my 2026 Spooky Season List as per usual (you can check out previous year’s lists here) and I will post the list sometime after the weekend!

I did post a review just now for the film Breeder, but there were two other movies I saw recently that I didn’t type up reviews for, but still wanted to briefly discuss: The Only Living Pickpocket in New York, and You Can See Everything.

As far as The Only Living Pickpocket in New York goes, I was really glad to see John Turturro be given another chance at being the lead in a feature film. The movie is one of the very few that ever made me want to visit New York, and it really made me reminisce about days riding the El trains and Metra around downtown Chicago. It’s a beautifully shot and acted film that really strips the art of filmmaking down to well written, well acted characters’ lives being portrayed with a lovely backdrop. If you’re a film nerd like I am, it’s definitely worth checking out!

You Can See Everything has become the talk of the documentary town this month, and for good reason! I’ve been a Nathan Fielder fan ever since I first stumbled upon Nathan For You on Comedy Central, and I think his co-director Lance Oppenheim is also equally brilliant (his feature film debut Primetime is more than likely going to go down as one of my top 5 films of the year). I remember watching a few episodes of the show based on Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos The Dropout with Rachel when it first came out, and I was familiar with Holmes’ story going into You Can See Everything, so I was pretty well prepared for it. That being said, YCSE is legit one of the crazier documentaries I have ever seen! I don’t want to give too much away, as that would ruin possible viewings for you, but if you are a fan of true crime kind of whodunits where you have to decide in your gut someone’s innocence, this is a must watch! I wouldn’t be mad at YCSE being the first documentary to ever get nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and I have very little doubt that it will win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film! Don’t let the runtime fool you, either, because even though it clocks in at a staggering 174 mins (!) it keeps you so on the edge of your seat engaged that you don’t even notice it’s long AF!

In writing news, I am about halfway through another round of edits on How Obvious, My Epiphany. It’s kind of been a trip for me being two or three years removed from it to go back and edit it again; all of the poetry in it (mild spoiler alert – there is poetry) still hits just as hard as when I originally wrote them (a couple of which I wrote almost fifteen years ago or longer), so I think that that means they are pretty solid! I am also still doing a second edit of Gravedigger Foley. That one is going a lot slower for me though because it is still relatively fresh, and I feel like the world building has to be damn-near perfect (which I feel like it is, but I want to make double sure)! Truth be told, I really don’t know how exactly to market a book before getting representation for it: I would love to just post tidbits here and there, but I feel like that’s a big no no to publishers nowadays. The “world” of my fictional town Bellingswood does have some pieces scattered around (in the short story section) but there are A LOT more that I hope to eventually share with everyone when the time is right!

In Grams news, we are back to watching Bones season 4. She did complain a little about how she is starting to get bored with it, but then when I showed her two other shows (the second season of Mobland, which I put on pause because I didn’t realize how much there is still to go–we are bingers in this house–and The Agency, which she put the kibosh on after one episode because “it was too slow”) she said “just go back to Bones!” Christmas movies are right around the corner though (I’ll keep a list of those too. Can’t remember if I did that last year or not, I will have to look), so she can look forward to that!

Alright pals, that’s it for me! Sorry for the longer post! Hope each and every one of you has a safe/fun Halloween! Also, get out and vote – I used to be one of those “both parties suck, voting doesn’t work” guys, but we really can no longer afford that luxury!

Til next time!