Matthew Wayne Selznick

This week brings two podcasts featuring Matthew Wayne Selznick:

First, the latest episode of the MWS Media podcast Writers Talking is now available, hosted by Matt and featuring Mark Jeffrey and Earl Newton. This eleventh episode is all about adapting prose fiction for the small and silver screens, and can be downloaded here.

Matt is also featured as the reader for the latest episode of the podcast horror magazine, Pseudopod. He reads David Barr Kirtley’s story, “The Disciple.” Download it here but be warned — it contains scenes of animal cruelty and graphic violence as well as eldritch horror.

The latest edition of the MWS Media podcast Writers Talking, hosted by Matthew Wayne Selznick, features Podiobooks.com founder Evo Terra and Another Sky Press founder Kristopher Young. The topic is Opportunities in Alternative Publishing. The panel discusses merit-driven economies, using podcasting as a marketing tool, trusting the audience, and more.

Listen to it right now.

All right, I know — I flip flop on the whole lolcat meme. I’ve linked to certain ones… and I’ve cried out that the meme must die… but darn it, I like cute pictures of cats as much as the next guy. So. Here’s a picture:

Come up with a lolcat caption, put it in the comments. What do you win? I dunno. Probably nothing. But it’ll be fun.

These are the things that move me. Thanks to Steve for hyping this strip in his own blog.

On the way to to work each morning, I stop at a coffee house off the 210 freeway and try to do a little writing for an hour or so. Sometimes it works out; sometimes I visit with a faraway-close friend on the Skype, and that’s good, too.

Either way, I’ve got the overhead music to listen to… and it’s never really bad. Last week, they has some eighties music running through… some (relatively) obscure, or at least, second-tier, eighties music. This week it seems to be the seventies, and equally esoteric stuff.

So over the last two weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of being dosed by New Romantic, New Wave, New Idealism, New This, New That, Progressive Rock, Folk Rock, Arena Rock… and so on. The thing to notice was that everything in eighties was New, and everything in the seventies was Rock (except disco, I guess?) But, as they say, I digress…

I started listening to music at a very early age. I had an AM / FM clock radio when I was six years old, I think — maybe I was older. I still have the iPod-sized transistor radio with the red, white, and blue “76″ I was given as a gift in 1976… and it still works. My first record was ELO’s “A New World Record,” and I remember when Queen’s “We Will Rock You” was first played on the radio because everyone was pounding on the picnic tables at lunch at school that Monday, bum-bum-BUMP, bum-bum-BUMP.

So the seventies are my oldies. But I’m lucky… I was a kid with an early taste for music in the seventies… but I was a teen-ager in the eighties.

I remember hearing U2 in 1980… and X not too long after that. From the beginning, I straddled the fence with punk rock on one side and more commercial New Wave on the other, with no shame. After all, I was still enjoying (and still enjoy) Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Rush, and Van Halen, too… so why not?

(digression: the overhead music is giving me “Dragon Attack” by Queen. When was the last time you heard “Dragon Attack,” on the radio or anywhere, for that matter. Awesome. Digression two: “A Little Help From My Friends,” the amazing Joe Cocker cover, comes on, and the girl behind the counter asks her co-worker, “Is this the ‘Wonder Years’ song…?)

Having cross-generational, cross-genre musical tastes helped in the social battlegrounds of high school, too… having “Thriller,” “L.A. Woman,” “Pyromania,” “Wild Gift,” and “October” in my record collection meant I had friends in almost every clique. I could hang out with the hessians while they smoked in the far corner of the parking lot, mope with the neuroes and punks on the other side of the lot while they snuck vodka from juice boxes and baby bottles, laze with the break dancers on the smooth concrete of the quad… and of course hide with the nerds and geeks thanks to my role-playing game phase (but that’s another blog post.)

So… when “We’re an American Band” comes on, I can tap my foot and smile and remember being a little kid staring rapt at the tiny speaker next to the bed. And when “Come On Eileen” comes on, I can sing along and hit every note and remember memorizing every word of the whole album. As a bass player, I can count Yes and Rush as influences right along with X, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Minutemen. As a guitarist, I can give the nod to Neil Young, John Mellencamp… and Johnny Thunders and Peter Case. I’m lucky!

Gonna be forty in a few days. Having such a deep catalog in my personal mental record collection has kept me young, and pushed the horizon far, far away on all sides, with lots to explore and discover in every direction.

My cross-generational tastes led me to be a musician, which has given me potential novels and films worth of experiences and allowed me to play alongside Dave Alvin, Exene Cervenka, DJ Bonebrake, and Johnny Ray Bartel when John Doe couldn’t make a Knitters gig… which is like playing with X and the Blasters at the same time, a real honor for me. Eclectic taste is the reason I first became a podcaster, which has led me to know people I hope with all my heart to know the rest of our lives.

My oldies are a gift, then. Happy birthday, indeed. Rock on.