Song: "Happy Hour Made Me Unhappy"

This one was originally a poem, but it seemed to cry out for music to accompany it, so I turned it into a song.  I suppose it's a bit of a murder ballad, but it's not technically a ballad.  The singer of the song should definitely have just DTMFA, as Dan Savage would say (Google it if you don't know), and gone on Tinder.  Instead, he's going to jail.  You can check out the MP3 here.  Really, this stuff is much more fun and cheaper than therapy.  The lyrics are below.  It's the same deal as always.  If you like a song, then feel free to cover it if you're in a band or whatnot.  I love to hear covers of my songs, so please let me know about your version.  If you start making money, then send me a check/we can work out a deal.  Similarly, if you want to use a song for your Youtube video or whatnot, then just let me know.  It's usually fine by me unless it's a commercial product or whatnot (and then it's likely fine as well--I just want my cut).  Find out first though.  Write me at wredfright ATATAT yahoo DOTT com.

Oh, happy hour made me unhappy.
Caught my baby sitting in someone's lap.
She said it was just a friendly kiss. Aren't they all?
But I think there's more to it than this.

My baby gets up early to go to work.
Why's she spending so much time with that dumb jerk?
My love, I hardly see her as it is.
I like to see her immediately after the close of biz.

Happy hour made me unhappy.

Instead, I saw her and him locking lips.
Instead, I saw her and him shaking hips.
She said he's just a coworker who happens to be a friend.
But I think for us this is the end.

She's always whispering in her cell phone.
She's always going places all alone.
I snooped.  Who was this person in my bed?
The texts I read on her phone made me go red.

I dropped by the bar early to surprise.
When I got there, I could not believe my two eyes.
At first, I thought maybe I was just seeing double.
But it was just my love turned to rubble.

By the time the police arrived to break me from my bubble.
It was too late.  There had been some trouble.
I murdered them both for a nightcap.
Oh, sometimes happy hour isn't such a laugh.

Happy hour made me so very unhappy.

Written July 2017
Recorded September 2017

Pushcart Prize Nomination

OK, I didn't see this one coming, but, apparently, the editors of New Pop Lit nominated my story "Operative 73 Takes A Swim" for a Pushcart Prize, which is sort of the Oscars of indie publishing.

What a nice surprise!  Thank you!

The Night I Wrestled Kong Sauce

I stumbled across this video the other day when a friend shared it on Facebook. I was helping out my buddies in Kong Sauce during their song, "The People's Elbow", named after one of The Rock's signature professional wrestling moves. Fittingly enough, given the wrestling-inspired title, they had me come out and wrestle the band and the audience, for some extra fun. When I am offscreen, I am wrestling the audience. Thanks to my buddy Zartan for posting this blast from the past!

Frequently Asked Questions About Being Dead Out!

Frequently Asked Questions About Being Dead by Wred Fright is published.  It is available as an ebook on Smashwords, Amazon, and probably lots of other places where ebooks are sold.  You can also get it directly from me here:

Format

EPUB $5.00 USD PDF $5.00 USD

Just select what format you want (EPUB or PDF), and I will email it to you once I receive your order (please be patient as I can be offline or on vacation; I will get it to you as soon as I can).

Amazon also has a print version available here.

There is no white light.  There are no deceased loved ones greeting you.  Instead, there is a stack of pancakes, or maybe a deer, or maybe just a bored bureaucrat asking you to fill out a customer satisfaction survey.  As if dying weren't bad enough, the afterlife seems to be about as exciting as filling out a tax form.  Worse, sometimes the bureaucracy of the universe screws up and tells you that your death was all a mistake and it would be sorted out shortly, and, in the meantime, would you mind patiently waiting as a ghost?

Such is the experience of McAllister "Mac" Rose in Frequently Asked Questions About Being Dead, a humorous fantasy, in which she, not comforted at all by such an assurance and assisted by a bumbling "Question Dude," must try to find her way back to life on Earth as a war in Heaven begins.  The novel satirizes conventional notions of life after death, positing that after one dies, one encounters a Question Dude who asks one to fill out a customer satisfaction survey before escorting one back into the general chaos of the universe.  All runs well until some of the Question Dudes start questioning the system and decide to set up their own private Hell to punish those souls that they consider undeserving of being recycled back into the energy of the universe.  Into this situation, a librarian who died by mistake wanders in, setting into motion events that will involve a mad monk, a former slave who likes to punch sharks in the nose for relaxation, and a slacker who died when his bungee cord was itself slack, among other characters.

Frequently Asked Questions About Being Dead is the third novel by Wred Fright.  The other two are The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus and Blog Love Omega Glee.  More info about the author and his books can be found at Wredfright.Com.

Praise for Fright and his works from fellow writers, literary critics, and scruffy publications:

"[A]n innovative writer of fun new pop lit--a pioneer in the fight to revive American literature" - American Pop Lit

"Wred Fright writes with the wit and cynicism of a modern day Berkeley Breathed, but his vision of our future is much closer to the world of Zippy the Pinhead than it is to Bloom County" - Crazy Carl Robinson

"[I]nfinitely preferable to the eye-glazing 'literary fiction' shoveled out by the bigger publishers" - Daniel Green

"I can't wait to read the next one!" - Eddie Willson

"Wred Fright is one of the best pseudo-fiction (maybe even just fiction) writers that I’ve ever had the luck to stumble upon" - James McQuiston

"[A] complete joy to read" - Razorcake

"I found myself laughing out loud a number of times, and that's a rare occurrence" - Zine World

If you are press, a high resolution image of the cover is here and one of the author is here.

Open Mics!

This is a video of me playing an open mic recently, courtesy of Meg Stepka, who hosts it. I've played a couple of these recently, mainly because my buddy Derek DePrator has been playing them. I've played open mics before, and they are fun, but it's more fun playing one when other musicians I know are also playing it. I probably will play some more open mics in the future, but I'm getting busy with the release of Frequently Asked Questions About Being Dead, so it might not be until 2018, which isn't far away. Some good musicians are at them, so they are fun to listen to as well. In addition to Derek, Meg's band, Meg And The Magnetosphere, usually plays, and they're really good also. In the video, I'm playing a Billy Bragg cover and then "Y-Town". The sound is a little reverby, mainly because I had to free the video from Meg's Facebook Live page (she said it was ok to do so), using some open source video editing software.

Pogeybait On Musical Mayhem!

The second half of the Musical Mayhem episode that The Escaped Fetal Pigs were on featured our pals Pogeybait. They talk about the Pigs a bit during their segment and then get to rocking. Check it out below!:

The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "The Beaver Of Love"

This is from the tv show Musical Mayhem. Jimmie Frederick taped the show at The Good Tymes Pub in Bowling Green, Ohio USA in the Fall of 1991. "The Beaver Of Love" was the last song by us before the rest of the program featured our friends Pogeybait. "Beaver" was another one of our "hits" on the local college radio station. It's a fun novelty song that Mark Justice and I wrote when we first formed the band, and it was essentially the two of us. Having the full band play the song didn't improve the song much, but it did make it thrashier. Playing in The Pigs was fun, and this song was always a good laugh. Alas, college bands inevitably break up when graduation comes calling. With The Pigs, we got an extra year when Mark decided to go to grad school and stay in Bowling Green, but by the middle of 1992, Simon Luke and I had both graduated and moved away and that was the end of the band. Mark and I did one side project a year later, which unfortunately got billed as The Pigs when it wasn't supposed to be (the promoter did that and not us), but that was the last time any of us played music together. Fortunately, Mark makes movies now, so we have been able to collaborate that way when I act in them. I moved on musically to being the main songwriter in a band, playing more guitar than just singing, and playing more serious songs, but The Pigs were a great way to develop musically. Watching the Musical Mayhem video was a fun way to reminisce about those days.

Quest For Uranus

My buddy Mark Justice's new movie, Quest For Uranus, has had its first trailer released. I play a reporter. You can see me near the end of the trailer.

The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "Simon On Acid"

This is from the tv show Musical Mayhem. Jimmie Frederick taped the show at The Good Tymes Pub in Bowling Green, Ohio USA in the Fall of 1991. "Simon on Acid" was a fun song. It was based on a Captain Kangaroo cartoon that featured a kid with a magic crayon or something. The kid's name was apparently Simon. Somehow, the drummer of the Pigs got the nickname Simon; it was before he was in the band, so I don't know why. It might have had something to do with someone thinking he looked like the kid in the Captain Kangaroo cartoon. In any case, the nickname stuck, so it made sense to do a "cover" of the cartoon song, which twisted it a bit to explain why everything the kid drew came to life: because he was on acid. I especially liked this song because I got to play drums while Simon sang. Everyone loved Simon, so this was a popular number. On this night, Simon also threw in a song he wrote for the band entitled "Jell-O 1-2-3."

The Goo Goo Dolls shirt Simon is wearing is not ironic. He was from Buffalo, New York USA and loved the band, who also hailed from there. He was even friends/acquaintances with them and got us backstage with them when they opened up for The Replacements. At that time, the Goo Goos were a scruffy Replacementsesque punk band. They hadn't yet evolved into a semi-boring adult alternative radio juggernaut. The early Goo Goo Dolls is pretty good stuff, especially the third album. Before that, they had the energy but not the songwriting chops. After that, they had the songwriting chops but lost the energy. In 1990, they were in a sweet spot where they had both.