[1] New Message

A special audio-only feature from [1] New Message: theme songs from TV shows that never were. Or were they?

Giotto Massacio was an Italian filmmaker who came to America to fulfill his childhood dream of making an American Western TV show. Unfortunately, he arrived in 1977, at least 15 years after the Golden Age of TV Westerns.

Undaunted, Carlo funneled his Western obsession into another genre: the police drama. Their saloon was a bar on Van Nuys, their "horse" was muscle car, but Breedlove and Marcus, "two unconventional cops bringing their own brand of justice to the streets" were almost prototypically Western heroes.

Specifically, they were "Spaghetti Western" heroes, which made for the show problematic for both fans of cop shows and of traditional Westerns. For instance, why did they always wear full length cattleman's raincoats in Southern California? Who puts horns as a hood ornament on a muscle car? Did anyone really still say "I reckon?" Why all those close-ups of people's eyes?

While well received by film buffs, the show never found a solid audience, and was quickly replaced by an generically generic police procedural.

A modest tribute to a well-known classic. If you haven't seen the Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man, or read the original short story by sci-fi master Damon Knight, you should. A classic twist ending, horrifying yet oddly funny.

Learn to count, the zombie apocalypse way.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of years of legends--yet no confirmed sightings of a mermaid. Is it because they're just in the imagination of very lonely sailors? Or is the reason for the mystery something...sharper?

[One] New Message returns with four more Halloween-themed videos each week in October. And everything ends with a live performance of all four scripts at the 16th annual Halloween Movie Madness on Saturday 29 October. Live music, undead comedy, and fiendish games and audience participation.

The 4 Weeks of Halloween are coming. Prepare yourself.

Time Travel is a tough job. And filling out your timecard is the toughest part. [One] New Message is here to help.

More videos are coming--was busy last few weeks putting on a live show (Yeti attack! Murder by comb! Fart jokes!). In the interim, here's a new trailer for [One] New Message, emphasizing one of the most attractive features of the episodes: they're short.

Pass it on! Tell your friends. Tell your neighbors. Tell your friends' neighbors. Tell your neighbors' friends.

More soon!

For the last week of Halloween, we get back to basics: it's a ghost!

For decades, I've been haunted by a single paragraph, a single decision, in the novel Frankenstein. So here's an alternate take on the horror classic.

One New Message continues its celebration of the four weeks of Halloween with a slasher tale--by telegram?