Prepare to Die

For Halloween I took a "Hello, My Name Is:" name tag and wrote "Inigo Montoya", slapped it on and went to work. So far about 98% of my coworkers have not understood the reference. I have spent much of my day explaining that "there's this movie with this character that says this line...". I've also had some fun interactions with the few people who've heard of Inigo. Some of the conversations so far:

"But, you don't have the boots... or the sword... or the puffy shirt and vest... and you don't really look like him at all."

(Coworker looks at name tag, without getting any explanation about costume):

"Oh, you're a Spanish guy? Are you going to speak Spanish all day?"

"He wears a name tag in the movie?"

Dave: "Maybe you should have referenced a more popular movie."

Ben: "The Princess Bride actually is a pretty popular movie."

Dave: "Well, maybe you should've done something from Star Wars. I've heard of Star Wars. Like, you could have a name tag that says 'Hello, my name is Chewbacca.'"

Zombie Wrasslin'

Zombies are kind of a big deal these days. I recently finished reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I've heard good things about Zombieland, and zombies don't get hiccups. Zombies are just the bees knees right now. I like zombies.

You know what else I like? Wrestling. (Or at least I used to. I haven't watched any WWE in quite a long time, but I used to like it a whole bunch.)

So what do you get when you combine these two awesome/nerdy things? River of Darkness! That's the title of a zombie movie that's in production right now that's going to star my all-time favorite wrestler/Olympic gold medalist, Kurt Angle. Angle was such a hilarious tool on the mic, and he was a crazy-entertaining wrestler too. In the movie he'll be playing the role of a sheriff of a small town that has to fight zombies.

"So what?" you say. Yeah, this story doesn't sound super original or anything, and even though I think Kurt Angle is hilarious and awesome, it's not like he'd make a better zombie fighter than The Rock or Woody from Cheers. But what I really dig is that the zombies are ALSO going to be played by wrestlers! HA! (There's a bunch of wrestlers in this movie that'll be zombies, but the only other name I recognized was Kevin Nash).

You think they're going to hire a bunch of wrestlers to play zombies just so they can walk around slowly and groan? Hell no! Those zombies are going to be choke-slamming and clothes-lining innocent civilians, and Angle's going to hit them with chairs and make zombies tap out of the ankle lock! I'm more excited to see this than just about anything ever. And that was before I saw the poster:

You can't arrest the dead! NO YOU CAN NOT! Not when they're zombie wrestlers! You half-nelson them all the way to Hell!

Get your popcorn ready!

I've been getting e-mails form iUniverse ever since I self-published with them 2 1/2 years ago. They send me e-mails with deals on book orders, new author news, marketing materials, etc. Mostly I take a quick glance then delete them and forget about my book for awhile until the next e-mail or small royalty check shows up. The last e-mail though was about their latest marketing tool, the Hollywood Book Trailer. "Professional film makers will create a live-action book trailer of your iUniverse title." Then they get an agent to look at the trailer and the agent tries to sell it to Universal, Time Warner, Sony, etc. Cool.

I don't need to see my book made into a movie, but it'd be kinda fun to see how they'd condense "Memoirs of a Gaijin" into a 60-90 second clip. Hopefully they'd capture all the comedy and pain of teaching kids' classes somewhere in there (I see two Japanese children hanging from the top of the door while a couple other kids violently swing it back and forth, and in the background two more kids choke each other in the window blinds. The American frantically tries to save them from death, they drop-kick him, their parents watch and laugh. ACTION!).

How much? O, only $19,990!! Yowza. Okay, maybe no Hollywood book trailer for me. At least not until I'm an eccentric billionaire with money to burn. But if you're looking to invest in a big-screen adaptation, I'll gladly accept donations!