Bleeding Neon as it appeared in early 2009, back when I wrote about Vegas politics, economics, and culture, you know, like I got paid for? And apparently had a lit agent?

October 18, 2006.

That’s the date I first registered the domain bleedingneon.com, although I’d coined the term a year or so earlier, and was using it as the name of my LiveJournal blog, which was why I bought the domain: to point it at pjperez.livejournal.com (which still exists, but you won’t see any content there; I pulled the curtain on my old posts a decade ago).

“Bleeding Neon” was an identity that pretty much summed up who I was at the time–someone so embedded in the world of Las Vegas that I bled neon. Clever, right? Ironically, in the background, I was plotting to leave Las Vegas not long after that, but the thinking was that I’d always “bleed neon,” no matter where I went. And now, 14 years later, after not living in Sin City for more than three years, I realize I’ll always be a Vegas kid, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense to still be operating a blog under this name, especially when the subject matter no longer ties to the theme.

I started writing this post at the beginning of 2020, and as anyone who’s been around for a while knows, I normally do a nice little New Year’s post around that time, typically to assess how I did on the goals laid out the previous year, and then to publicly announce new goals for the next year. In a life where I live and die by to-do lists, it’s just a grander to-do list, really, with some added public accountability.

Well, that didn’t happen for 2019/2020, and here we are, almost 11 months and one pandemic later. Did I know, somewhere in the back of my head, way back in early January, that writing a blog post laying out goals for 2020 would be an exercise in futility? Because, ha ha, obviously, joke was on humanity this year, huh? Especially on those of us who like to make plans. And it was doubly, triply full of cruel jokes for me and my family, for reasons further detailed elsewhere.

So, while we’re cancelling everything else in our lives (if we’re smart–those of you pretending everything is fine just because you want it to be will continue to get distant side-eye from me), now’s as good a time as any to cancel one more thing: Bleeding Neon. I’m keeping the domain (because, I mean, it’s still great–and it might be used for other projects TBA), but this here blog? It’s going dark after this post.

Of course, looking back over the infrequency of posts over the last few years, that’s not a revelation. I think there were only three updates posted in 2019. I have more half-written, unpublished drafts than I do published posts. That’s both reflective of how ridiculous the last few years have been for me and mine, and of the era in which we live. You know the one. Clickbait driven. Hyper unfocused. Likes-and-shares obsessed. Platform-specific. Who even reads blogs anymore? (I do, and I guess you do, but the kids, not so much.) I subscribe to 100+ RSS feeds via Feedly, but only about 10 of them populate with content anymore.

So, if you’re looking to follow the Adventures of Pj going forward, there are still a lot of other options. In descending order of frequency and relevance: Twitter. Instagram. My “official” website. Facebook, sometimes. And my “project” sites, like Parkway of Broken Dreams or Bourbon & Bitters (also more active on social media than the blog itself). There are probably a few other outlets on the interwebs, but if I can’t think of them right now, then I’m not likely to use them much these days.

Before signing off, let’s take a moment to reflect upon the 10 most popular posts here at Bleeding Neon:

10. Spider-Man’s Amazing Company  – A 2016 post about one of my illustrated pop culture mashups that includes the observation “I’m not entirely sure that the very nature of time itself didn’t magically shift at some point,” which seems awfully prescient given how 2020 feels.

9. Homemade Comics – Letting the world know in 2012 about a Tumblr I started in 2011 to post scans of ALL of the comics I made when I was a wee lad (that Tumblr itself has gone fallow in the wake of *everything*)

8. 2018 – The last published edition of the aforementioned annual year-in-review, in which my stated goals for 2019 included finishing Parkway of Broken Dreams (achieved, but not in 2019), starting a production company (done!), producing a scripted TV pilot (nope), increasing self-care (yeah, 2019 was the bomb for that, but 2020 erased all those gains), and de-cluttering our lives (made some progress here, until half my parents’ possessions ended up in my garage).

7. Insomniac: Electric Daisy Carnival Las Vegas 2013 – A post about my second annual illustrated contributions to the official EDC magazine. You know, I kind of miss getting paid to draw sometimes…

6. Project: Rooftop ‘Spider-Man: Webhead 2.0’ contest – Another illustration-related post from 2011 (I’m starting to sense a common theme among these most-viewed posts), sharing my losing entry into a Spider-Man costume redesign contest.

5. Douchey bedding available at Dillard’s – One of the earliest entries on the blog, when I actually blogged about stuff in Las Vegas. In this case, it was poking fun at Ed Hardy bedding found during a trip to the mall (the post got a lot of organic traffic from people specifically searching for said bedding).

4. This Week: Seduction of the Innocent – A preview of the art exhibit I curated at UNLV’s Barrick Museum, back when I did things like curating gallery exhibits. My life has taken weird turns.

3. The Maze (of Trails) Runner – A reflection of my experience running my first (and only) trail race in November 2015, back when I still ran for medals. I think this one got so much traffic because it was linked to from the official Trails of Glory website.

2. Independence Day – A 2012 post “reprinting” my 2003 CityLife column remembering my friend Lin “Spit” Newborn, who was executed by Nazis in the desert outside Las Vegas along with his friend Dan Shersty back in 1998. I come back to this every year on the Fourth of July. And it’s a topic I’m probably not done with yet.

1. Super Justice Friends – This 2016 post has more views than any other by a large margin, Maybe because it blew up on Reddit or something? I don’t know. But it’s yet another pop culture mashup illustration, and maybe a reminder that I shouldn’t have put down my Intuos pen a few years ago.

And with that, I think it’s time to move on. Thanks to everyone who’s ever taken a few moments out of their busy lives to read, comment, and sometimes even share whatever nonsense I’ve posted here, even when I shifted from writing about stuff happening in Vegas to just whatever was happening inside my head. Bleeding Neon is officially closed.

DISCLAIMER/WARNING: There’s going to be some stuff in here some of you might not personally agree with, but this is me talking about my own journey to feel better and keep the specter of an early grave at bay, so if you’re not down with talk of body fat percentages or carb restriction, I totally understand. Just stop reading and thanks for stopping by.

I did end up having that meeting with a personal trainer in January, at which point I found out I was a bit heavier than I thought I was (173.5 pounds, to be exact), that my body fat was at 25.9% (considered the high end of average for my age), and my waist was up to 34 inches (explaining why my size 32 pants no longer fit). If you believe in body mass index (BMI) as an indicator of anything real (most people don’t; there are too many spurious factors to rely for a simple weight/height ratio to mean anything substantial), I was slightly overweight. None of this was really news, of course. Yeah, having the hard numbers in front of my face was new, but I knew I was out of shape (for me).

Smash cut to five months later: I just clocked in at 161 pounds yesterday, with a body fat percentage of 21.4% (low end of average, approaching “ideal”), and a waist down to just over 32 inches. In fake-ass BMI terms, “normal.” I bet right now you’re asking yourself, “Pj, what did you do to achieve these entirely reasonable results in five months?” Well, reader, you knew I was going to answer that…

Hitting the Gym + Doing the Work

As mentioned previously, I not only got a gym membership, but I have actually been using it. My employer offers a subsidy for wellness-related expenses, so I wasn’t going to let that money go untapped. In addition to hitting the gym to do weights or cardio three-to-four times a week, I also started running regularly, doing three-mile runs a few days a week.

But it wasn’t just exercising in the gym or hitting the streets. I also tried to incorporate healthier behaviors into everyday activities. For example, I stopped using the elevator at my office. I’m on the fourth floor, and it’s a double-flight of stairs per floor, so going up and down those multiple times per day has added to my overall step count and fat burning efficiency.

And amazingly, none of this interfered with my ability to get done creative work, which was a fear of mine. Having the structure of work-gym-meal-work actually helped provide a balance to my life, and as I’ll get to later, I had more energy thanks to all these changes.

Personal Training

Yeah, this is not an option everyone has access to, although honestly, I could only justify the expense temporarily thanks to a short-term boost from a contract gig. After my initial meeting with the personal trainer, I took advantage of the introductory deal offered by 24 Hour Fitness, which was something like 5 sessions for $250. Then I signed up for another 12 weeks, basically, at a price that sounds like a lot, but in retrospect, is worth it when you consider how much I might (would) have spent eating out.

FitBit

I initially bought a FitBit watch/fitness tracker just to keep an eye on my heart rate. My trainer was concerned that a dizzy spell that took me out at the end of a particularly intense leg day was related to my heart rate. But it was helpful for also counting steps (even though the model I have is inaccurate as heck), sleep monitoring, and oh yeah, telling time. But most importantly, it gave me access to FitBit’s fitness dashboard, which tracks all that activity, plus (if you choose to) food and drink consumption. So I started tracking everything I ate, at first to make sure I was not consuming more calories than I was burning, but eventually to also track my macros when I instituted a…

Diet Change

I was doing fine with the training regimen and calorie restrictions (which weren’t really restrictions, because as active as I have been, I was still able to consume 2,000+ calories a day while staying at a deficit), but I wasn’t seeing any physical changes, and I still didn’t feel any better (just tired and sore all the time). I had actually gained a few pounds, which probably was just new muscle weight, but still. So, beginning May 1, I cut out (most of) the crap. Bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, sugar—all nixed, for the most part. No more pastries at the coffee shop. No more lazy bagel breakfasts. No more pizza dinners. No more office donuts. No more French fries.

I flipped my macros from a diet that was like 50% carbs, 20% fat and 30% protein to one that was more like 25/50/25. This was done mostly by eliminating excess carbs from certain meals (like getting a protein bowl without rice or a salad without croutons), or by switching out starchy, high-sugar ingredients with healthy fats or fibrous veggies (using avocado in a smoothie instead of banana).  Basically, some weird combo of keto and paleo without being too restrictive. A lot of fish, eggs, nuts, leafy greens, healthy fats, augmented by some minimally processed vegan products. No fruit except low-sugar berries. Occasional cheese and yogurt (of the plain variety).

I also shifted from spending a lot of money eating out to spending a lot of money grocery shopping. When Sara and I would eat out, I’d stick to variations on what I was already eating at home: vegetables, fish, eggs, nuts. Not that I was drinking much alcohol anyway since moving out to California a few years ago, but I kept that to a minimum, obviously, and only had a one-shot spirit or dry wine on occasion after a few weeks.

The physical benefits were almost immediate. I went from 174 lbs at the start of May to 163 lbs by the end of the month. I was able to fit into pants I hadn’t in years. I bought new clothes at the size I always assume I am, and they fit with room to spare. I’ve had more energy overall, and have been more creatively productive than I have in recent memory.

What’s Next?

By no means am I done. I’m still carrying around about 34 pounds of fat, and although I’ve been told I’m noticeably leaner, I have neither gotten to the “OMG abs” nor the “swole” stage of this fitness journey. And although my overall health seems fine, I’m still waiting on results of blood work I had done last week as part of my annual physical. But I saw a cardiologist who said my heart sounds solid, my EKG chart looks good (I actually have bradycardia, or low resting heart rate, which is typical of runners and people who do a lot of cardio), and he doesn’t think my dizzy spell after a heavy workout was anything but overexertion.

For now, though, I’m happy with the progress I’ve made, and to be frank, proud of myself for putting in the work and committing to making real lifestyle changes that seem sustainable and not nearly as difficult as I thought they’d be.

I’ve been kind of bi-polar when it comes to fitness throughout my life–periods of great physical activity followed by periods of pure sloth. Part of the sloth is the laziness that comes from having pretty good genes and a usually OK diet. The other part is lifestyle–mainly the workaholic kind that puts every creative and economic pursuit above anything else.

I wasn’t particularly athletic as a kid, but I signed up for my first gym membership at 18 or 19, along with my friend Jason. It was at the Las Vegas Athletic Club (LVAC), a 24 Hour Fitness equivalent that I’d come back to on and off throughout my time in Vegas. The first time around, I didn’t really stick to it. Showed up maybe once or twice a week for a few months and then lapsed. Playing music and publishing zines took priority.

In my mid-20s, my ex-wife and I joined Gold’s Gym, and I got a lot more serious about getting/staying in shape. At the time, I was still pretty scrawny (weighing in at about 145 lbs; I’m about 5-foot-10), and my goal was to put on mass. I was getting up at 4:30 most mornings to hit the gym before work. I was taking creatine supplements, downing high-calorie shakes, reading a lot of muscle magazines. I managed to get up to about 160 lbs by the time I got divorced and physical fitness again gave way to work, social activities and a lot of drinking. I’d occasionally dawdle around at the tiny gym inside my apartment building, but mostly I was just sweating out the aforementioned booze.

After my life stabilized again in my early 30s, I found myself blown up to almost 190 lbs, with super high cholesterol and other physical ailments. As I’ve documented here in detail, I changed my lifestyle, my diet, and my exercise regimen. Not only was I back at LVAC (with my now-wife Sara), but I started running, first for health, then just because I enjoyed it. That was my thing for several years, running several road and trail races, including a half-marathon, and–according to one doctor–getting my cardiovascular system as healthy as an 18-year-old. I let my LVAC membership lapse, but only because I had access to a corporate fitness center, replete with free personal training. I was eating well, at my ideal weight, and getting stronger…

…then I had an appendectomy.

A lot of people have had their appendix out. It’s very common. It’s not life changing. But it was bad timing for me, in a number of ways. First, I didn’t just have an appendectomy; I also had an umbilical hernia fixed. So my abdominal region was tore up and useless for a few months, which means I couldn’t do any strenuous activity or heavy lifting. At the same time, however, my band was doing pretty well and about to release an album, so I was back on my feet playing music within a month of the surgery. That was probably a mistake. I could barely stand up straight with the weight of the bass guitar slung over my shoulder to play a 30-minute set at first. Then I stupidly lifted my extremely heavy bass amp into my car by myself on the way to a gig one night, straining my still-fresh scar tissue (and possibly causing another hernia that may or may not persist to this day, not that any doctor will take me seriously).

I got back to the gym a few months later, but then lost access to it (and my awesome primary care physician) when I got offered a new job. I opted not to join another gym, but put myself through a regimen that required no special equipment. All body weight exercises and fresh-air cardio. I stuck to that for about a month before it got too damn hot in Las Vegas to be outside working out. And then the new job got super intense (and would stay that way for the next few years), and I let that and playing music and making comics and being social come before self-care, once again.

Moving to California was supposed to change all of that. Perfect weather! Sunny beaches! Easy access to healthy food! But, um, I just worked a lot. And didn’t leave the house much, because I was working at home, and then this whole thing with our dogs and their inability to be left alone without losing their minds happened. So, yeah, occasionally Sara and I would ride our bikes (dogs in tow) to the beach, and maybe once a month, I’d go for a 2- or 3-mile run around the neighborhood. But I wasn’t eating great (or, rather, I was eating too greatly), not moving my body enough (except for all those push-ups, I guess), and suffering a bit of depression, to boot.

Well, a lot of that has changed. We’re in a bigger house where the dogs have been able to adjust to being alone again without them causing headaches for our neighbors or anxiety for their owners. I have a new job that requires me to leave the house and is located in a quaint, walk-able neighborhood that encourages me to, well, walk a lot. I’ve started riding my bike to get around on the weekends again (the weather has helped). My employer doesn’t have a gym I can use, but it does give me money each month to spend on wellness, which brings up back to why I’ve signed up for a gym membership once again.

This time around, it’s 24 Hour Fitness, and my “home” location is located in the heart of downtown Costa Mesa. It’s a Super Sport location, with multiple levels. There are racquetball and basketball courts, group fitness rooms, cardio machines, an indoor pool, and what appeared to be a bootcamp-style group training area, right out in the open. One guy behind the front desk (really more of a retail counter) greeted just about everyone by name as I got entered into the biometric sign-in system. I got pitched on some sort of protein supplement that was on sale. There was an a maze of workstations manned by personal trainers. Everyone at the gym was already fit. No one was coming here begrudgingly because their doctor made them.

My first workout was not great, but it was a staring point. I got winded too easily and my shoulders kinda just gave out at one point. But I have an appointment with a trainer this weekend to assess my goals and come up with a plan to achieve them–even if I go to a slightly less intimidating location to execute that plan in the future. And hopefully this time, I stick to my guns, because the reality of old(er) age and the amount of my clothes that don’t fit are staring me in my puffy face.

As I start writing this post at 10:23 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, we have no concrete plans for ringing in 2019. That’s mighty different from last year, when we wrangled more than a dozen people from several different states to gather for a weekend of activities in Palm Springs. It’s also different from pretty much every other year prior. But, then again, 2018 turned out to be The Year of Doing Things Differently (But Also Kind Of The Same).

It was the first full year Sara and I were California residents. I officially gave up my Nevada license plates and driver license. It still didn’t feel quite like home. Part of the problem was that I wasn’t really tied to anything here in Orange County. My friends, my collaborators, and my work were all still in Las Vegas. I was traveling across the Mojave by plane and car at least once a month, sometimes twice a month. When I wasn’t going to Vegas for work or play, I was traveling elsewhere for the same, either solo or with Sara. Huntington Beach was the place where we paid rent and parked our cars, but I wouldn’t say it was necessarily where we lived. Or at least, where I lived.

One of the factors causing that disconnect was starting production on (and building an amazing community of support around) Parkway of Broken Dreams, my long-discussed, long-delayed documentary film about the rise and fall of the cultural scene around UNLV in the 1990s. Although this wasn’t specifically one of my stated goals in last year’s look-back/look-ahead (just filmmaking in general), it was one of my 2015 goals, so I guess better late than never. But, to the point above, it did necessitate a lot of trips to Vegas to shoot interviews and capture footage. So did another behind-the-camera project I started with Vegas-based writer Matt Sorvillo, whose own screenwriting career saw a bump this year. That one you’ll probably be hearing about soon.

The other thing that kept me in Vegas so often was my work for A Very Cool Las Vegas Hotel-Casino, of course. I’d spent the last year and a half remotely managing web content for that center-Strip resort, which as I mentioned before, kept me very busy—and also very isolated. I spent about nine months almost entirely focused on a website overhaul that included the roll-out of a fully integrated rewards portal. It turned out pretty great, and I’m proud of the work we did, but it also took an emotional (and probably physical) toll—one made worse by the physical distance between the rest of the team and myself. So, right before Thanksgiving, I stepped down from my role there, fairly satisfied with the incredible work I helped produce over my two and a half years, including the launch of the (minor award-winning) lifestyle blog 52 Stories and a zillion behind-the-scenes projects that only digital marketing nerds would really appreciate.

Cutting that last daily tie to Vegas, and then moving from a condo in Huntington Beach to a house in Costa Mesa, helped feeling like an actual full-time Californian (again) more real. So did getting acquainted with a rotating group of creative folks thanks to a weekly coffee meetup helmed by long-time pal (and now neighbor) Todd A, whose books and podcasts you should definitely check out. It’s helped me to explore and appreciate more of Orange County (a goal from last year), and it’s led to new artistic collaborations with folks I otherwise would not have met.

The other thing both the move and the changing employment situation enabled was having the freedom to get the heck out of the house. When we moved from Vegas into the condo in Huntington Beach, our two little Pekingese furbabies didn’t adjust very well, and they would get super anxious when left alone. This meant they’d bark nonstop, and when you share walls with neighbors, that doesn’t go over well. Thankfully, because of my remote work situation, I was able to minimize their alone time, but it did mean we’d have to either take them with us if we went out to eat (thankfully, in Southern California, this isn’t really a problem most places), or pay to board them if we wanted to engage in activities that aren’t pet-friendly. It was pretty ridiculous. So, we moved out of the condo (sadly, because we really liked it) and into a standalone house where we could ease them out of their abandonment issues without pissing off quite so many neighbors. And it worked, even if now the pups don’t get to hang out with us as much.

All that ridiculousness aside—and disregarding the dumpster fire that the year was politically, financially, and environmentally—2018 was personally pretty successful, using my stated goals at the beginning of the year as a gauge. I did finish and publish another volume of The Utopian, which was also the last comic work I’ll be publishing for a while as I shift all of my creative attention to film and TV projects. Along those lines, I also had minor success pitching a dramatic comedy TV series that has been gestating for several years, making it to the quarter-finals of the ATX Television Festival Pitch Competition, and receiving helpful notes and feedback from a few producers and managers. And I even knocked out a pilot script and proposal for another drama series (which admittedly needs a lot of work), as well as the proposal for a true-crime series that was well-received by at least one producer.

I also did a lot of travelling, but mostly the same kind as 2017: domestically, and often for work. I did make it to a few new spots—San Antonio, New Orleans, Vail—but also a lot of the same (Denver, Seattle, San Diego). And, as mentioned above, a lot of trips to Vegas, which is really more of just a long commute at this point. I didn’t make it outside of the country this year, and probably won’t in 2019 unless there’s a film festival involved.

The other goal I accomplished—with the fiscal help of Parkway of Broken Dreams supporters—was getting a new, dedicated computer for media production. Although at the beginning of 2018 I thought it would be something to help with comic and illustration work, by the time I bought it, it was a Dell gaming PC, not a Surface Pro as planned, optimized for video rendering to help speed up my editing and post-production film work. It’s weird working at home on a Windows desktop (feels a bit like 2005), but it was the most bang for my buck compared to what I could get out of an equivalent Mac setup.

Now, with 2018 firmly in the rear-view, we can get to the fun part: Setting intentions for the year ahead. As always, I make my personal goals public to keep myself accountable to the world, as much as to help with my own project planning. So, here we go:

• Finish Parkway of Broken Dreams: Although a lot of work has been done on this film, a lot more lies ahead, including the longest, hardest part: editing. I’m not going to get too much into the details here—there’s an entire website for that—but suffice it to say that this will consume most of my “free” time in 2019.
• Start a film production company: This is cheating a little bit, because I’ve already started making moves on this, but as I ramp down the comics publishing business, I’m not only refocusing my creative energy on filmed media, but also my entrepreneurial instincts. Obviously, I already have a few projects in the hopper, but I’d like to formalize this and start diversifying my portfolio, as well as increase my collaborations with other filmmakers locally.
• Produce a scripted TV pilot: And when I write “TV,” that just means an episodic project versus a standalone film, distribution method to-be-determined. As mentioned above, I have two pilots already finished, and I’m working on a new one in my first collaborative writing project, and this is just the next logical step. Realistic for a year in which I already have to finish a feature-length documentary and get a new (unscripted) webseries out the door while paying the bills? Even if it’s just a proof of concept, yes.
• Dedicate more time and effort to self-care: I really expected to live a healthier lifestyle moving away from Sin City and to a place where it’s nice outside like 99 percent of the year. Because of the above-mentioned reasons, that didn’t happen. In 2019, it has to. My new career direction is already providing a better work-life balance, and I’m actually taking steps to get my body in as good of shape as my mind to match. Don’t catch me slipping.
• Be a better friend and more thoughtful family member: I tend to get wrapped up in my own stuff, and anything or anyone that’s not immediately within my sphere of attention often gets ignored. This isn’t anything new; I’ve never been good with family stuff, and I’m bad at being present in general. But I need to change that. Letting holidays or birthdays pass without even an acknowledgment? Not cool. Making travel plans that never include seeing my parents? Lame. On the flipside…
• Cut out negativity and toxicity: I’ve already done a surprisingly good job of staying out of drama merely by not engaging in anything that might invite it online. To continue doing this going forward means unfollowing or even unfriending people on social media who don’t add anything meaningful or positive to my life. And it means being more positive in my own interactions—less snark, less ironic detachment, more earnest celebration of people and things that I love. And recognizing that longevity in relationships does not equal meaning or importance.
• Reduce, reuse, recycle: A dozen years ago, everything I owned fit in the back of a panel van. Not that I want to go back to that, but both Sara and I have a garage full of boxes and bins stuffed with who-knows-what from our collective decade of moving houses, changing jobs, and (in my case) shifting creative interests. We both have some simplifying to do. Do I keep the drum set I haven’t played more than a few times since As Yet Unbroken parted ways in 2013? Do I sell the comic book collection that’s been taking up space in various closets and storage units, unread? Does anyone know what I should do with the 20 Ethernet cables I’ve accumulated over the years? In 2019, we’ll find out.

Wow. This year spawned a longer post than expected. We’re around 1,800 words here. Last year’s was about 1,000, by comparison. And those goals? A lot more touchy-feely than I expected. But when everything else is doing pretty well in measurable, tangible ways, what’s left is the intangible. And in the long run, that’s the stuff that really matters.

Along those lines, I’m off to go celebrate the coming of the new year with those oft-disregarded important people in my life. You should do the same. See you in 2019. Let’s all be better to each other and ourselves, eh?

• PjPerez.com, on which I don’t really “blog” (yet), but is the main “portfolio” site for my work/projects, which I revamped a few months ago
• From Zero to Hollywood, a blog about breaking into the film industry I launched like eight years ago and only recently started to update again
• 52 Stories, The Cosmopolitan’s blog, which I run as part of my job job
• Bourbon & Bitters, a blog ostensibly about Old Fashioned cocktails but also anything related to whisky, which I quietly launched about a month ago and haven’t talked about at all
• Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival and Pop! Goes the Icon, which aren’t my blogs/sites, per se, but for which I entirely manage the content
• Parkway of Broken Dreams, which we’re gonna talk about here in a second…

Parkway of Broken Dreams–which, if you’re reading this, you probably already know all about anyway, but humor me–is a documentary film I’m producing/directing about the rise and fall of alternative culture on Maryland Parkway in the 1990s. Long-time Pj followers might recall the 2006 cover story I wrote for the Las Vegas Weekly about the same subject. It’s basically that oral history, in visual form.

I’ve been gestating the idea for this doc for a long time, but only actively started production in June. After shooting and gathering enough footage to cut a decent teaser trailer, I finally announced the film to the world in August. And, today, I launched a crowdfunding campaign for the film on Seed&Spark, a website dedicated to building a filmmaker’s career beyond just funding and beyond just one project.

Making this documentary is just the next logical step in the convergence of my creative pursuits and career pathway. I still have a love for journalistic-style writing, even though I’ve mostly left journalism behind. Why the heck else am I starting new blogs and evangelizing for brand journalism? But my passion for filmmaking has driven most of my creative pursuits the last year or so, and although I have several fictional TV and film projects in the works, a documentary lands right in the middle of that journalism-filmmaking Venn diagram. Plus, I have a little bit of experience in this area.

To this point, I’ve completely bootstrapped Parkway of Broken Dreams, the same way I have with almost all of my other creative endeavors–and not just financially. I’ve been the one-man producer, director, camera operator, gaffer, sound mixer, editor, archivist, researcher, craft services provider…you get the point. I can only get so far, so fast on my own, and that means finding more funds for equipment, travel (especially travel), legal costs, festival fees, music rights, and whatever else may come. There are grants and film funds, and believe me, I’m working on those, too, but because of the passionate and overwhelming response to the announcement of this project, crowdfunding as a kickstart (versus a Kickstarter) made a lot of sense.

Plus, the Seed&Spark thing. Aside from the education and support of a filmmaking-specific crowdfunding site, there’s also the potential exposure/networking/financing from legit Hollywood players. To wit, Parkway of Broken Dreams is participating in Seed&Spark’s Hometown Heroes rally, in which hometown-centered films (both fiction and nonfiction) can qualify for an opportunity to be executive produced by the Duplass Brothers, among others. That means not only possibly more funding for the project, but also access to resources we’d otherwise not have.

The trick? To qualify for that access, we have 30 days to not only hit at least 80% of our $15,000 funding goal, but also to gain 1,000 followers for the project. So, if you’re reading this and are interested in supporting Parkway of Broken Dreams financially, that is super rad and I already love you, but just as important is clicking the “follow” button when you land on the campaign page, (and, of course, sharing the news about this campaign with every living creature–dogs, cats and dolphins included).

My life–aside from all the 52,475 other plates I’m always spinning–will probably be consumed entirely by this campaign until I know it’s been greenlit, and that means I’m going to be the most annoying person to follow on social media for a few weeks. I apologize in advance, but I also thank you in advance for your support and encouragement. This is a project about which I’m very passionate, and so are a lot of other people, and making it as comprehensive, enlightening and hopefully entertaining film it can be will take a village (or at least $15,000).

I don’t even want to list off the excuses for not posting about this here sooner, but real quickly: Tomorrow, Sunday, Aug. 12, I’ll be kicking it with a whole slew of Pop! Goes the Icon books, including my recently released second volume of The Utopian, at the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention in, well, Los Angeles. It’s one day only, from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., and I think I’ll be somewhere in the dealer room behind an eight-foot table. Admission is $13 per person for the whole day (kiddos 5 and under are free), and there’ll be celebs like Tom Welling and Pom Klementieff there, if paying for autographs and photos is your thing. Or you can spend half that money on a copy of my new book and I’ll throw in an autograph and photo for FREE. What a bargain!

Twitter friend Jessi Sheron posted yesterday “does anyone else ever worry you’ll run out of ideas?” My response was, “Having ideas is never a problem. Having the time to execute on them is the challenge.” This came, of course, in the middle of me experiencing one of those “bursts of ideas with not enough time to execute on them” periods. I think the video above speaks to that, somewhat.

It also came on a day when I was feeling actually not super productive, either with my day job stuff or my personal projects. I sat down and tried to work on scripts, but just didn’t have the energy (physically or mentally) to do so. I stepped away, came back to my desk, and moved on to drawing some comics, which seemed to do the trick. Sometimes my to-do list says “write this script,” but my brain says, “sorry, I want to do something more visual.”

But, even if I chose to do absolutely nothing at that moment–to watch The Flash or take a nap or whatever–that would have been OK. Or it should have been OK. I have to keep telling myself, “Hey, it’s OK if you aren’t super productive today. You did your best, and you can try again tomorrow.” (And yes, I know tomorrow isn’t guaranteed, but let’s not get into that discussion.)

I see a lot of creative pals on social media express the same guilt/frustration over lack of productivity. It’s unhealthy. We can’t be “on” all the time. We can’t beat ourselves up over it. Yes, we need to hit deadlines when our clients/employers/editors need us to. But we also need time to think, time to relax, time to exercise, time to be with people, time to recharge.

My mother-in-law was staying with us last week. While we were out just casually walking around Huntington Beach after dinner one night, I came up with a bunch of crazy/brilliant ideas for social media promotion. She pointed out that had I not taken the time to just meander around, I would have never freed up my mind to gestate those ideas. She was right. Like, super right.

So often, we’re all just doing, doing, doing. This happens whether or not we work in “creative” fields. It’s the nature of our on-demand modern society, but also because a lot of employers have stepped up the pressure to do more without adding resources to meet those goals, so a lot of time is spent executing without investing the time into ideating.

My pal Todd A, when he can, hosts weekly writer meet-ups here in Orange County. I think his original goal was to actually have us sit down and dedicate time to writing, in an almost co-working type of environment. What actually ends up happening is that we all talk about our projects, and lives, and in the process, incidentally bounce ideas and problem-solve without realizing it. And you know what? That’s good. That’s needed. We can individually sit in a corner by ourselves and write our books, games, songs, whatever. But having that free-flowing, caffeine-fueled time to exchange ideas is just as important, if not more so.

So, next time you’re beating yourself up about not getting enough done in a day or you’re experiencing writer’s block, just stop. Breathe. Take a walk. Watch that episode of Game of Thrones. Meet a friend for coffee. Pet your dog. Make a sandwich. And feel OK with it. The work will be there when you get back.

The actual thing that’s been distracting me from whole-hog promoting this book’s release is the other projects I’m in the midst of, specifically of the filmmaking kind. I’ve been shopping around two TV pilots (one of which that made it to Round 2 of the ATX Television Festival Pitch Competition), plucking away on a few screenplays, and shooting/gathering material for a feature-length documentary that, yes, I have kind-of talked about but only in broad strokes.

A big chunk of that latter project involves shooting a lot of sit-down interviews, and although I’ve already knocked out several, I’m always trying to find ways to improve on composition, lighting, etc. That means I’ve also been spending a lot of time thinking, researching and experimenting along those lines, which brings me to this video:

Instead of my usual YouTube “talking to the camera” approach, I shot this in a more traditional documentary/news style (there’s even a version I made for PGTI in which I “interview” myself), mainly so I could get in some good practice shooting and editing for the aforementioned documentary.

I recently revamped my “official” website, making it more of a portfolio for projects irregardless of format (comics, films, articles, whatever), which is another reason I haven’t been posting over here: I’m at the point again where I’m updating multiple sites/blogs (oh yeah, there’s that filmmaking one, too), which obviously becomes kind of cumbersome. I’m considering nixing this one, and just folding everything into pjperez.com. The Bleeding Neon brand just, well, doesn’t really fit as well anymore; plus, I may use that for something else. I don’t know. We’ll see.

In the meantime, I’ll try to be better about keeping this site updated, even as I am about to dig into yet another filmmaking-related project that is in its infancy, but which hopefully I’ll be able to share before the summer is over. And hell, it’s just begun!

I immediately started taking screen grabs while doing a live commentary on Twitter, and others found it equally hilarious, demanding to see the full video, so, well, here it is.

I’ve talked before about The Jason Only Project, the bedroom music project that was basically just me and Jason Feinberg vamping on guitar and vocals (and occasionally drum machine). The song to which I’m so very melodramatically lip-syncing in the above video is from one of our early jam sessions, something I titled, retrospectively, “Tainted Window.” I don’t know how many of the lyrics you can make out, but I improvised them all on the spot, and I think they included mentioning a bird I spotted outside the window of the bedroom in which we recorded that tape.

The video was recorded in the room I was living in, rent-free, thanks to a friend/former employer of my mother at the time. He ran an Italian furniture store, and my bedroom was basically the sitting room at the front of his little house, hence why it doesn’t look like a bedroom at all. At night, I would just pull a small mattress out from the hallway to use as a bed, then put it back away in the morning, so the room remained a nice showpiece.

This was during a period when I was kinda floating between retail jobs, was super broke, didn’t have a reliable car, and spent a lot of time teaching myself to record music, armed with only a really cheap little Yamaha keyboard and a tape recorder. But I had this video camera I kinda just permanently borrowed from my parents, and apparently a lot of time on my hands, so voila!

The sad thing is that I probably thought this was really cool and dark and serious at the time, as opposed to what it actually is: hilariously maudlin. And now on the interwebs for your enjoyment.

Emerald City Comic Con 2018 starts in just over a week (March 1 – 4), and ya boy Pj will be there at Artist Alley table MM13. And, assuming everything I stress over in the above video pans out, I’ll actually have new books to sell ya, as well as restocked old books, some new art, new buttons, and hopefully a cheery disposition.

I’ve exhibited at Emerald City three times previously. First, in 2010, which was my first “big” con after I started doing comics quasi-professionally the year before. Back then, ECCC lasted only two days and took place all in one exhibit hall. (It’s now four days and spans like every floor of the Washington State Convention Center.) Then I was back in 2013, again in Artist Alley, and then again in 2014, with a too-big booth for Pop! Goes the Icon, where I hosted guests like Dan Schkade (San Hannibal) and Ed Hawkins (Tales from Lost Vegas).

This will be my first appearance at any convention in years under my own “brand.” No Pop! Goes the Icon elements. No books by other creators (not counting anthologies to which I contributed). Just me, my comics, my art, and my graying beard. For four days. By myself. BUT. I am excited to have new books to show off, and to reconnect with my Pacific Northwest peeps. Plus: It’s Seattle, which I love, even though it’s going to cold AF and possibly snowing, which I don’t love.

Anyway, if you’re going to the show, be sure to swing by Level 6 (!), where you can find me, according to the map below, in the Writers Block (?), wedged between some panel rooms and the University Book Store. I’ll be the guy in front of the banner that says my name on it, probably eating a Clif Bar.