ICYMI, Part III - Page 4

It’s a clichéd saying, but I’ve always liked the notion that cowards die a thousand times before their death. I like it as a concept because you can apply it to so many things. For me, I’ve always enjoyed applying it to any kind of performance I give, whether it’s theater, reading poems, or trying to pretend I have any business doing standup. Believe it or not, but it’s helped me in the past to think along those lines. Anything that involves facing a crowd is embracing the exclamation point of my social anxiety. I’m also a shameless attention whore, and I believe in doing everything possible to promote a product or an idea that seems sincerely worth the effort to me. If that means trying to engage a large group of people, none of whom are entirely sure as to why they’re paying any attention to me, then that’s fine.

-Gabriel Ricard, from “Beyond Baroque,” published in the travel essay collection 3,000 Miles to Face the Music Land

Sometime later, Cam woke up to soothing circumstances, quickly shifting as he realized that while the beach was nice, if not a little chilly, he couldn’t actually move. That in of itself established firm frustration and increments of panic leaping forward. 

Rope kept his wrists painfully together, behind his back. But there was something else. While aware of the rope, and even of the discomfort, his hands didn’t seem capable of generating a logical physical response.

It was a lot like what he hoped he knew to be true about sleep paralysis.

He also realized that he was sitting on a park bench. Only this was a bench which rested permanently on a small slab of concrete. Both of these things were facing what was probably the Pacific Ocean. Cam was left to guess, which was something he always liked to explore to completion.

-Gabriel Ricard, from “Go West, Young Man,” published in the short horror fiction collection Benny the Haunted Toymaker Grows Up

I’m not old enough to remember the glory days of Z Channel,
but I had the Independent Film Channel
in the late 90s, on up through the early emotional trainwrecks
of the first half of the 2000s,
and that was more than enough for a young person
who wanted to run through the backdrops of a thousand stranger movies
than anything I’d seen in my life so far.
Before Netflix renting out more DVDs
than anyone in history,
until they went to streaming and ruined everything
before Blockbuster ruined everything
by simply being fucking Blockbuster Video,
DirecTV was my lifeline.
Especially when my Dad decided to ban video stores
after Video Land had him arrested for a late tape,
IFC was the most important part of my cheap film education.

-Gabriel Ricard, from “Fuck the Sundance Channel,” published in the poetry collection A Ludicrous Split 3

Gabriel Ricard writes, edits, and occasionally acts. He has been a writer for nearly 30 years and a movie columnist for almost 20 years, with both of his long-running movie review columns Make the Case and Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo now available through his Patreon, also called Make the Case. 

With a few assorted publishing credits to his name, his subjects cover everything from travel essays to poetry about old video games and pro wrestling, to cosmic horror short fiction. His newest books are We Have Waited Long Enough and 3,000 Miles to Face the Music Land. Other books include Clouds of Hungry Dogs, Bondage Night, his Ludicrous Split trilogy, Tonight’s Main Event, Love and Quarters, Benny the Haunted Toymaker Grows Up, and The Oddities on Saturday Night. Gabriel currently lives in Orlando, FL with his wife, three crazed ferrets, and an inability to stop ordering delivery. He watches way too many movies, has spent tens of thousands of miles on Greyhound, and has somehow also worked, or tried to, in fields such as radio, theater, and standup.