Glenn Gaslin's Astonishing Tales of Danger+Wonder

Skullrider. Drawn in a meeting.

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:51:14 -0800

Skullrider. Drawn in a meeting.

My New Book! The Sorcerer From California, a Wild Adventure Novel for Kids

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:07:03 -0800

Kinda big news: My new book The Sorcerer From California is now available in paperback and Kindle edition. It’s the first of a series I’m calling the Adventures of Moko & Zaya, and it’s based on stories that I told my son Zev when he was 5 (more on how that all came about later).

The keys to these stories were always: Cliffhangers, high adventure, and lots of monsters. We came up with so much material that I have about seven books mapped out, mining the best and strangest stuff (Kings of the Volcano is next).

Anyway, check it out. If you dig Sorcerer, please drop me a review on Amazon, cool?

Here’s what it’s all about:
A mysterious bracelet! A lost island! An evil queen!

California kid Moko spends his days quietly doodling monsters and exploring the beach on his bike. Until an unexpected gift sends him on a harrowing adventure! He soon finds himself transported, though his dreams, to a world filled with danger, magic and really strange creatures.

The place is as real as his hometown of Oso Beach, and here Moko meets fat flying ladies, morphing mud creatures and a mischievous cyclops named Chuck. But can he save their fragile isle from a shadowy invader and her flying fortress?

And why is that annoying girl Zaya from his karate class here, too?

As their dreams begin to merge, two kids from a sleepy beach town must master a strange world’s magic and defeat the shape-shifting menace known as Mafibious. But are they too late?

Find out, as the adventures of Moko and Zaya begin!

Get it: In paperback and Kindle edition.

My Day With Newt Gingrich. Or Rather, His Skull

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 00:03:00 -0800

Way back in 1995, when Newt Gingrich was at the peak of his power and making a whole lot of noise in Congress, I was a (very green) newspaper reporter in Virginia. I wrote a (very silly) weekly column with my colleague Ken Baker, and it only made sense that we go to Washington D.C. to mess with Gingrich.

I’m pretty sure we couldn’t get away with this today, but here’s what happened in 1995, as it ran in The Daily Press:

* * *

THE NEWT ADVENTURES OF KEN & GLENN

We went to the nation’s capital to find Newt Gingrich. He was out of town.

We left a list of questions. He never answered them.

But we don’t mind. Really.

Empowered with a one-day-only press pass, we roamed the hallowed halls of the Capitol and acted like journalistic goofballs. We brushed shoulders with presidential candidates and D.C. reporters who take themselves way too seriously.

Our mission began with a search for Newt: the round-faced Republican Speaker of the House, the distinguished gentleman from Georgia, the great American Contractor and perhaps one of the most powerful men on planet Earth.

With notebooks in hand, we emerged from the underground Metro station and headed toward the mythical white dome of democracy.

Outside, hundreds of high school students and tourists lined up before the marble steps of the Capitol.

A tourist-handler lady told us to get in line.

“We’re with the press,” Ken explained.

She pointed us to a side door reserved for special folks like us.

We climbed three flights of spiral stairs, told three sets of armed guards that we didn’t yet have our press credentials and passed through two metal detectors before finally reaching the Senate press office.

The guys handing out press badges asked for proof that we really were reporters. We didn’t blame them.

“What are you covering today,” one of them asked.

We could have said, “We’re Newt hunting.” But that would have sounded silly. Unprofessional.

“Um, we’re hoping to cover the Foster nomination,” Ken said.

The big news of that Friday had something to do with a Senate committee hearing on whether Henry Foster should be surgeon general. A real sticky subject, shaded with moral issues like where life begins, the size of cigarette warning labels and stuff like that. So, naturally, we avoided it.

We headed toward the House side of the Capitol. That’s where Newt hangs out. Confused tourists clogged the corridors, staring at the ceilings and statues and paintings of guys in powdered wigs.

Glenn approached two loitering students and showed them a photo of Newt he had ripped out of that day’s Washington Post.

“Have you seen this guy?” he asked.

“That’s Newt … somebody, right?” one of the teen-age girls guessed.

A few yards away we spotted the office of Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader and Republican front-runner in the next presidential election. We had heard he doesn’t get along real well with Newt.

Ken peeked inside.

“I don’t want to be here,” Ken explained to a secretary who sat surrounded by pictures of Bob. “We’re looking for Speaker Gingrich’s office. Do you know where it is?”

She directed Ken “past the Rotunda” and to the right.

We knew we had found our destination when we saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull encased in glass. Newt keeps a full-scale model dinosaur head just outside his office.

A guard stopped us before we got too close. We said we were looking for the Newt. He pointed us down the hall to the big man’s press office. What we saw in the room was this: one guy watching C-SPAN on his computer and no fewer than 10 larger-than-life photographs of Newt Gingrich’s head.

The biggest one would have fit nicely on the body of a towering, flesh-eating reptile.

The guy at the computer, Robert George, explained that he writes all of Newt’s newspaper opinion pieces and that nobody important was in the office that day.

Newt, he told us, had flown to New York to meet with “the editorial board of either Time magazine or The New York Times, I forget.”

Luckily, we had already written our 10 questions down. We handed the sealed envelope to a terse Newt press aide named John Cox.

And then we took some photos with the enormous Newt head.

Just when we thought we were annoying the busy staffer, John asked us if we’d like to see the balcony outside the speaker’s office. Newt does a lot of work out there, he said.

“We got new cushions,” John said of the lawn furniture set near Newt’s office window.

Glenn asked if we could lounge in the Gingrichian seats.

“You don’t want to sit in Newt’s chairs. They still have plastic on them,” John replied.

Newt staffers also spend time on the balcony, he said. John then told us the closest thing to a scoop we got all day. “The day before St. Patrick’s Day, the Prime Minister of Ireland sent a keg of Guinness for the president and Newt and the ambassadors - and they barely tapped it,” he said. “Needless to say, we, uh, finished it off.”

Questions we left for Newt:

How much can you bench press?
Do you use hair spray? If so, what brand?
Were you psyched when you heard Connie Chung was fired (considering that she slimeballed your mom)?
Why do you kiss up to people who call FBI and ATF agents jackbooted thugs?
What does jackbooted mean? And is it a good thing?
Why do the rich seem to get richer and the poor, poorer?
Which world religion is the one true faith?
Does Green Day rock? Or are they just a bunch of posers?
If you could be president of any world nation - except the United States - which one would it be?
O.J.? Guilty?

The Response (left on Ken’s voice mail)

“Hi, Ken. This is Robert George from Newt Gingrich’s office. I think we met on Friday when you and Glenn visited. I called you to let you know that unfortunately the Speaker won’t be able to respond to your questionnaire. We appreciate your dropping it by. He’s going to be out of town most of the next couple of weeks. Time constraints just don’t quite fit it in.”

Bonus! The column mug that ran with it:

Top 10 Movies I Saw This Year With a First Grader

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:35:00 -0800

Every movie I saw in a theater this year, I saw with a 6-year-old.

Normally, I see everything that comes out. Or, at least, a lot of things that come out. It’s often my job to do so, and it’s always a passion. Not this year. Not with a baby in the house and the schedule I’ve been keeping.

Still, I had a strangely great year at the movies. And with that restriction in mind, here are my Top 10 Movies of 2011*, all of which I saw with Zev:

Super 8: A movie actually about kids, not just for them.
The Adventures of Tintin: Only thing on here I need to see again in the theaters.
Rango: Soooo terrifically weird.
Captain America: Great musical number, great chase scenes, just the right tone.
Real Steel: Zev stood on his chair and cheered, you can’t beat that.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: Second best of the whole series, actually slowed down to spend some time with the plot.
The Muppets: Too much nostalgia, but the songs make it.
Cars 2: I think I’m alone (among adults) in loving this, but so what.
Thor: At least I get to see a Natalie Portman movie.
* Keeping this spot open, since I haven’t yet seen Hugo and have a feeling that’s going to be a winner.

What was your No. 1?

Got a new creation over on Monsters With...

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:42:13 -0700

Got a new creation over on Monsters With Issues:

monsterswithissues:

Pinkfingers will mess you up. Big time. And he won’t even feel bad about it or nothing, so don’t you think about doing or saying whatever you were about to do or say to Pinkfingers. Just don’t. Because, in case you were too dim to pay attention the first time, he will seriously and legitimately mess you up. Without remorse, without fear of reprisal, without a shred of humanity or pity or restraint.

Don’t laugh. Stop it.

Pinkfingers is serious about this. He’ll do it. Guy’s gonna mess you up. Bigger than big time, even. Giant time. Gargantuan time. You get the idea. Or you better. Because otherwise, well, you know what happens otherwise.

E! on Tumblr: We're Looking for Fall Interns!

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:12:51 -0700

E! on Tumblr: We're Looking for Fall Interns!:

eonline:

We’re looking for interns this Fall! You must be a college student and available to work out of Los Angeles. Here’s what we’re looking for:

Internship: E! Online Intern
Salary: Unpaid (for college credit only)

Responsibilities:

• Research stories, galleries or other editorial projects
• Pitch and write blog posts for E! Online

monsterswithissues: Dethhöp needs a friend. Do you want to be...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 22:39:34 -0700

monsterswithissues:

Dethhöp needs a friend. Do you want to be his friend? That’d be great. So great. The best.

Seriously, thanks. He needs this. Especially after that last so-called buddy of his followed him down some hole and came out in thirteen pieces.

And then how they found his only other friend floating in the river, missing all his bones and organs, just a floppy wet sack of skin.

They’d been having so much fun together, too.

I mean, wow, this is terrific. So nice of you. He’s been really broken up since last year, when his school pal from way back fell asleep hanging upside-down from a tree branch, his body pale and stiff, his eyes wide open and white as soymilk. He’s still there, too, his feet bound in thick red sap that’s dripping down his legs and attracting just the biggest flies you’ve ever seen.

Anyway. Real nice of you. Guy can’t handle being so lonely. Makes him a little, you know, just a little crazy.

Former Child Wizard: The real Harry Potter, grown up and washed up and living among us, dishes on life as a boy wonder and the magic of comeback

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 11:47:01 -0700

A little story I did for E! Online years ago, when Chamber of Secrets first came out. It’s not on the site anymore, and we certainly don’t do stuff like this these days, so I’m reprinting it here. You know, for kicks:

Nobody at the little girl’s birthday party knows who the magician in the round glasses and pointy blue hat really is, and they wouldn’t believe it anyway. The three dozen screaming, drooling kids at this Brentwood, California backyard gala—cake for the kids, martinis for the parents—might not understand, or care, about his name, his true identity.

So the thirtysomething man with sad eyes and a thick British accent just smiles and does simple tricks in for little Rachel, who turns 5 today and wants everyone to know it. He combines two solid brass circles. He asks if this is your card, and he pulls rabbits from the most unlikely of locations.

The parents call him The Wizard Guy™, which is what it says on his business card: “Available for birthdays, bar mitvahs and everyday witchcraft.” Soon, if all goes well, they’ll be calling him by his real name, his given name, a name of legend: Harry Potter. That’s right, the Harry Potter.

“Hey, mister clown,” yells one of the kids, cake and a mean grin all over his face, “do that thing with all the handkerchiefs again.”

“Get it straight, kid,” counters the magician-for-hire, calm and commanding. “I’m not a clown.”

This surly kid at Rachel’s party simply doesn’t know that his messing with Harry Potter. He hasn’t been told that the stories of a wand-wielding boy wonder—now being turned into megabucks fiction, film and action figures—are true, all true. Or as true as Hollywood biography can be, his childhood in the ’60s and ’70s spun into effects-heavy “event” flicks. Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Real. The evil Voldemort? You got it. All that stuff about sucking the blood of unicorns to keep you alive? Try it sometime.

As part of a deal—a very, very bad deal—struck decades ago by his adopted family, Potter’s life story now belongs to others. Lots of others. J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. and, he explains, “everyone else who’s name isn’t Harry bleedin’ Potter.”

But now, decades after defeating the ultimate evil (wait for book 7, kids) and tearing through a sex-drugs-and-magic-trick era, he’s got a comeback staged. The one-time kid sorcerer now has a reality show in the works, which explains the camera crew following him while these dozens of rowdy American children shove cake into their mouths. And he’s decided it’s time to come clean, to tell his story, to go prime-time with the truth.

Before he does, little Rachel, who turns 5 today, approaches him with a small white balloon animal in her hands.

“Excuse me, mister wizard,” she says. “My mommy said you really are magic. Is it true?”

Harry Potter, 34 years old and 6,000 miles away from home, pauses for a long moment to stare at this child. He smiles a sly smirk and reaches into his pocket to fondle an old, worn wooden wand. And then he changes his mind.

“You have no idea,” he says, turning away.

* * *

A movie about how Potter got here—making balloon animals for $15 an hour—won’t break any box office records, but it’s a story he’s now ready to tell. “The problem, see, was that I did everything worth doing when I was, like, 10,” he says now, pacing his spare, tasteful apartment in the San Fernando Valley. “I vanquished evil, I mastered heavy-duty spells. I was a first-class, planet-saving supernatural badass. But then it’s like, what now?”

Beyond the three-day stubble, red eyes and unkempt hair, his resemblance to the prepubescent Daniel Radcliffe, who plays him in the movies, is simply uncanny. His face is still young, his smile infrequent but honest. He flitters around his one-room pad as he talks, lighting candles, cleaning the refrigerator, piling dirty robes into the washer, keeping tabs on the slate of soccer matches on satellite television. A small dog he calls Hagrid sleeps on the sofa, snoring.

“These kids today,” he says, lighting the third cigarette of the morning, getting nostalgic, “they don’t know what magic is. And, I tell you, it’s good that they don’t have to.”

His early years are, he says, captured pretty well in the books, which you and about 200 million other people have already read: He was born in 1968, destined to be a great wizard, raised among the “muggles,” or regular folk, until he could study magic at Hogwarts school. There, he got into all kinds of adventures, trouble and life-threatening situations.

“I’m not going to kid you. What we learned in that place was often black magic, some heavy old-world shit that—thank the gods—nobody does anymore. I mean, you want your kids conjuring demons and flying around on broomsticks?”

As he talks, the phone rings, again and again. Potter takes the calls, abrupt, businesslike even when talking to friends. As a thirtysomething has-been in Hollywood, he’s fallen in with others who peaked young and still languish in the sunshine and easy living. Wil Wheaton calls to ask a soccer question. Kirk Cameron wants to know where the party is tonight, because “Mac’s [Macaulay Culkin] in town, and wants to get laid.” He hangs up each call and launches right back into his story.

In school, Potter spent much of his time battling his enemy No. 1, Voldemort, who was responsible for killing his parents and many, many others. But even Potter himself can’t see how “the little high jinx” of his youth can be stretched out to the seven books and movies Rowling has planned. “This woman, how she can milk my school years for so many books is beyond me,” he says, scooping dog food onto a small plate. “Soon she’ll be writing like 800 pages about that time me and (Ron) Weasley put Vaseline all over Dumbledore’s broom. I mean, when are people going to be get tired of me?”

When his notoriously dim-witted step-parents—you know them as the Dursleys—caught on to all the excitement, they sold the rights to his life story to a small publishing house in London. Like many child stars, Potter got the short end of the broomstick. He’s under legal obligation to stay quiet, stay out of sight, and—until now—he’s played ball. “I get a piece of the action,” he says, “but that and a few gigs wiping rich kids’ asses’ll buy me a milkshake, you know?”

For legal reasons, Potter won’t say how he ultimately defeated Voldemort, but the world’s most powerful kid wizard did graduate Hogwarts—with honors. And then the wider world called his name. “I could have stuck around Hogwarts, grown a beard, chased tenure. But in those days, at least in the magic community, I had some serious, serious heat.”

So he did what any up-and-coming magician would do: Headlined his own show in Las Vegas.

By the age of 18, he held court five nights a week at the Imperial Palace Hotel & Casino—as “The Wizard of Oooo’s and Ahhh’s!”—and the freewheeling Vegas magic scene of the mid-‘80s hit the spot. It was lavish, wild and competitive, and this honest-to-god spell-spinner from across the Atlantic brought the party everywhere he went. He would conjure live, three-headed dogs on stage and have them battle each other. He’d levitate the entire audience and make the hotel disappear for hours at a time, just for kicks. Everyone thought it was part of the act.

He built a compound in the desert and filled it with his every fantasy, a lavish aviary for his hundreds of owls, a replica of his childhood home, an oversized guesthouse for his half-giant friends. He considers renowned cat wranglers Siegfried and Roy—or Fischbacher and Horn, as he call them—his showbiz mentors, and he will not, under any circumstances, talk about the women. “You take a kid fresh out of a stuffy private school and put him in that environment,” Potter admits, laughing, puffing hard on a Camel, “and you’re asking for trouble.”

In the next decade, a series of disasters nearly sawed his dreams in half. The crowds stopped materializing for his show, and the casino big wigs were never fooled when he padded the auditorium with “apparitions.” He fell into an every-flavored-bean addiction, flying them into the country by the crate-full, putting on 50 pounds in sardine- and booger-flavored candy, all washed down with butter beer. Childhood buddies Weasley and Hermione Granger (both now teaching at Hogwarts) stuck up their noses at how he profiting from their “special” art, and they refused to visit.

At the end of his rope, Potter finally bet and lost his fortune in a risky deal with wrestling-mogul Vince McMahon. “America just wasn’t ready for the Extreme Quidditch League,” he says now, describing warehouses still full of bright red-white-and-blue Nimbus brooms with the XQL logo. “I know that now.”

In the 1990s, a destitute Potter moved to Los Angeles to, once again, reinvent himself. What he found was an endless parade of stuck-up kids in gated suburban palaces who needed to be entertained.

“Do you know what kind of work there is in L.A. for powerful wizards whose resume includes, what, saving the world time and again?” he asks. “Nothing. Dick.”

Hollywood didn’t “get” his appeal, and agents and producers kept confusing him with Harry Anderson, the tricks-turning hack from Night Court. He couldn’t even find work during the ‘90s magic boom, when David Copperfield bedded supermodels and hipster/hottie/magician David Blaine drew crowds and cred by, say, freezing himself under sidewalks.

“Blaine,” says Potter, calm, pulling underwear from his combo washer-dryer, “is a punk. An imposter. He’s a…”

He turns his head, conjures something foul from deep in his throat and spits it onto the floor.

“New subject.”

Today, in the midst of what he calls “this nonstop Harry Potter media gang-bang,” he’s finally wrangled a deal that might bring him a fat check—or at least a little dignity. He’s wrestled the rights to his life post-Hogwarts, and has spun it into a big idea, the only option he has left, a TV show. How Potter will play in the world of Ozzy and Anna Nicole remains to be seen, but he won’t be counting on alchemy, sorcery or quote-unquote spell-casting to bring in ratings.

“Do you know what happens to magical powers when you don’t use them?” he says, pulling himself atop his washing machine, shirtless and hunched, while Hagrid the tiny dog paces at his feet.

“Just like everything else that makes you special when you’re young: They fade, until you’re just like everybody else.”

* * *

At the backyard Brentwood birthday party, a camera crew follows Potter’s every move. He won’t talk much about the deal, but “a major network” has already picked up two 10-episode seasons of Former Child Wizard, a sort of “reality sitcom” that will blow wide Hollywood’s underworld of magic-users, B-listers and has-beens. Not to mention the everyday life of the most famous magic-school grad in history.

Siegfried and Roy will guest star. Wheaton and the Coreys will be regulars, and Potter hints that a few of his old Hogwarts cohorts have agreed to an appearance. “Ron’s on board, but only if we do an arc where I return to campus and apologize for some of the shit I pulled on Draco Malfoy,” he says. “The guy was a first-rate fink, but maybe he didn’t deserve everything I did to him.”

The idea of cashing in on the reality TV craze may seem crass and opportunistic, but Potter insists that it will be a show about redemption, sadness and the magic of everyday things. “Will it spoil these big, overblown movies for kids? Maybe,” he says. “Will it make me happy? I can’t say.”

On the day little Rachel turns 5, the cameras follow as Potter escapes the backyard for a smoke break, leaning against his faded Ford Aspire parked out front. It’s hot today, and he’s been sweating.

Before long, Rachel, with a small balloon-animal poodle in tow, tracks down her guest. Tears stream down her face, having been just blown off by Potter moments before, and she tugs on the wizard’s long black cape. High above her head, she holds the balloon poodle he’d made earlier. She’s giving him another chance.

“How did you know my dog died last week, mister?” she says. “You know he looked just like this.”

Potter gently takes the twisted tubes of stretched rubber, and his face is no longer that of an annoyed weekend magician, but is filled with such peace and power that the girl stops crying immediately. He mumbles something under his breathe and a warm, warm wind stirs from under his robes.

A flash of light, the scent of rosemary and sulfur, and a white poodle puppy goes bounding out of the hired entertainer’s arms and into the yard. The girl chases it, accepting everything she sees as real. And it is.

Harry Potter adjusts his hat, and heads toward the backyard, the party.

“Who wants to see a card trick?” he says, pulling a faded, well-worn deck from his pocket and walking, once again, into the crowd.

monsterswithissues: It’s a total cliché, to be sure, but...

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:51:34 -0700

monsterswithissues:

It’s a total cliché, to be sure, but Heatwheezy needs this wormhole in his head like he needs, well, like he needs a hole in the head.

Bad enough his combustible hairpiece won’t lay flat today and that he has to run this stupid meeting in an hour and his morning Peet’s was so bitter, but then to have this cosmic anomaly sprout from his temple? The worst.

Oh, and then the thing warps his blueberry scone to some far corner of the universe before issuing all kinds of galactically random garbage: jets of super heated dark matter, floating tendrils of primordial starsoup, a fleet of tiny alien warships, and this huge green hand that keeps slapping him across the face and slinking back through the singularity.

Wormhole? More like asshole.

monsterswithissues: After years of grip-fisted, rigid-fingered...

Fri, 13 May 2011 09:50:50 -0700

monsterswithissues:

After years of grip-fisted, rigid-fingered refusal to swing or twist or fall, to waffle or rock or bend, after a lifetime of straight-up, straight-ahead thinking and taking the unbending position, Fungalfist is suddenly seized by an urge to follow the arc of the sun. To spin and pitch, to twirl and drop and plunge, to give in, finally and at last and after all, to the gentle coaxing of gravity.

As you can imagine, that doesn’t work out so well.

New Thundercats series trailer. I watch a lot of Cartoon Network...

Wed, 06 Apr 2011 09:41:05 -0700

New Thundercats series trailer. I watch a lot of Cartoon Network already, but this won’t be making the cut. If I so needed a nostalgia kick, I’d find the original.

aw yeah tiny titans

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:46:58 -0700

aw yeah tiny titans

all done

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 01:21:57 -0700

all done

awake

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 09:35:49 -0700

awake

eyes

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 23:28:38 -0700

eyes

WALKUM HOM OZ!

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 08:47:37 -0700

WALKUM HOM OZ!

brothers

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 19:29:30 -0700

brothers

savta’s posse

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 06:26:29 -0700

savta’s posse

hours away

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 03:59:38 -0700

hours away

robot 1

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 22:24:09 -0700

robot 1