I find things alone, when I’m alone. The sizes of things impress me. The look in a small dog’s eyes, the blank stares of cities living in fear. I look for deeper things, the Essence, whatever I am. Discovery is replaced by immutable laws. Perhaps it isn’t that we are moving too fast. Maybe we move fast to distract ourselves from this: nothing lays along the path of the speeding train. It’s over the hill.
I lived in Ireland for three months for no good reason. I looked for the Essence and found it. But could I have found it in Wilmington, Delaware? Too bad we only get one spin at the wheel. Anyway, I threw a party once and it was a good time. Talked to two Spanish fellows about poetry. There we were, off to the side in a cheaply constructed bedroom turning anything in sight into chairs and beer coasters, getting riled up about poetry. They recited some things I knew and didn’t know. I slang a few on them. One friend remarked how great it was to meet people who could do this – just relate to each other over language barriers and the Atlantic. The Essence.
The great tragedy of culture, that which can communicate Essence, is its absorption of All Things. All Things illuminate and contaminate, and it all comes out in the wash to a big, fat nothing. And it’s loud. That’s a dangerous way to build a speeding train.
By the way, if you want to accelerate your search for the Essence, surround yourself with those who don’t speak English. The struggle to perceive and communicate the Essence will be like a beating bass drum in your heart.
It’s not all good when it’s happening. I had a few different crushes in Ireland. No less than three simultaneously. But they amounted to a Big Fat Nothing.
Here, the Essence is being pounded flat. It’s no wonder – Essence requires bravery, confidence, knowledge and openness. But there is always a murderer, a blemish, a contorted fact, an unflattering mirror.
Bruce Lee once instructed to take what works and abandon everything else. The Gang of Four once said, “I found that Essence rare/ it’s what I live for.”
I once said all this here about the Essence without fully understanding it. I’m dead now, as you’re reading this. Maybe. Wherever I am, I understand the Essence because I’m part of it. Maybe.
Here’s how it happens to me: I’m walking along, minding my own business, and suddenly a small dog with big eyes, a big man with beady eyes, a strange building alone or 50 normal ones in a row, a joke that gets it so right, a powerful person getting it so wrong, a place that looks like home for anyone and everyone, shoes that command respect, music that’s accidentally good, noise that forms sonic structure, a car sexier than any woman, a hub cap sprung loose rolling cleanly through a crosswalk, people I want to know, children who stare at me, old people frowning, a waterfall of coffee into a cup, a mansion with wall-to-wall books in every room …
These things, they take my breath and stiffen me up, slap me on the back. My tendons, muscles and ligaments tighten across my bones, calibrated closer to the Essence and ready to be plucked. I turn a corner and a new gale blows through me, playing a new tune.
This is Elwood Kasem, bringing you long distance requests from our listeners:
Elwood,
My house has been invaded by flies. I’ve spent all week swatting them with the fly swatter and now I think they’re aware of me because they’re all sitting on my ceiling. I am a short woman, 5’1”, and cannot reach and I think they know this. They laugh and mock me. Tonight I’m buying a pair of boots with suction cups on them. I will walk up the wall, then onto the ceiling where I will swat the little bastards to death.
To send me up the wall and upside down, could you play Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling?”
Thanks,
Lady X
Dear Mr. Kasem,
I work at an organ donor clinic in West Memphis, Arkansas. Many people are coming into the office looking for body parts, but, as you probably know, some are hard to come by. Right now I have ten applicants in the next room waiting for a new pair of eyes. Alas, here in West Memphis, inbreeding has led to eyes so crossed they eventually form a single eye in the forehead that needs to be surgically removed. The bad news for them is that I only have one set of eyes. I’m about to go into the room and break the news. Your program is playing in the waiting room, so it would help me a great deal if you could you play “I Only Have Eyes For You” by the Flamingos.
With much appreciation,
Dr. Horace Weatherbee , M.D.
Dear Elwood Kasem,
You may have read about me in the news. I was on an elevator in Houston, Texas when a man got his head caught in the elevator’s closing doors. The elevator jerked up quickly and the man was decapitated. His body lay outside on the floor but his head was in the elevator car with me. For 15 agonizing minutes before I was rescued by firemen, I stared at this man’s face, at once full of expression and yet frozen at the instant of his death. To help me cope with these images, I was hoping you could play “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell” by Iggy and the Stooges.
Your fan,
The Elevator Lady
Dear Elwood Kasem,
I have gastrointestinal problems. I shit three times before lunch and the rest of the day I could go at a moment’s notice, like a voodoo lady is poking my voodoo doll’s belly with a bottle of Pepto Bismol. I’m in here so often I’ve started naming each toilet. If you could play “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” by Jerry Lee Lewis, I think it would make me feel better.
Sir Shits-A-Lot
Elwood Kasem,
I don’t know if you gonna get this or read it or like it or play it, but here goes: Me and my buddies, all combat veterans, got some shotguns and we’re going to break up a peace rally in Memphis today. These queer, college boy peaceniks have got it coming to them. Can you play Prince’s “When Doves Cry?” It gets me and the boys in the mood!
Yers,
Gerald Fortesque
Dear Mr. Elwood Kasem,
Well, it’s that time of the month again. I use Ultra Lights with wings mostly. Funny thing happened the other day. My religious group chose me this time for the fertility ceremony, so I had to spend all day tied to the roof of the barn naked. Boy it was a windy one. All I could do to get through the day was sing one song over and over. The ceremony has ended but I don’t think I can get the song out of my head until I actually hear it. Could you play “The Wind Beneath My Wings” by Bette Midler?
Love,
Windy in Wyoming
Yo, Elwizzood Kielbasa,
Me and my friends always play you in the mornin’, dog! We’re your biggest fans! We play you every time we move those bowels, beeoch! Anyway, last night me and my posse decide we gonna git it on with a eatin’ contest. Now my friend Pedro, we call him Petey Pickle cuz he got a tiny pecker, he says we should go low fat on this one to watch our weight. He gets us these Subway sandwiches and shit. So I’m all, “Let’s get our munch on, beeoch!” So we eatin’ and eatin’ and man, I dunno what my dealy-o was, but during the contest I couldn’t keep it down. My puke bucket was brimmin’ cuz, fo’ shizzle! My boys kept handin’ me Cold Cut Trios, Chicken Pizziolas and what not. Petey Pickle’s all “Eat more, beeoch!” I was pukin’ so much I couldn’t tell him, “Yo, I’m out like sauerkraut!”
I know he’s listenin’ to you now, so you gotta play “We Don’t Need Another Hero” by Tina Turner off the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome soundtrack.
Thanx, Beeoch!
Jizzared McSubwizzle
Dear Mr. Elwood,
I work at a shitty company doing boring work. The mere sight of my boss makes me want to do unspeakable acts. I’m quitting someday soon, but I’ll need a good reference from him. Then I can do my unspeakable acts. Please play “Patience” by Guns N’ Roses all day, everyday, until I say it’s ok to stop. If you don’t, I know who you really are and where you live.
I can’t wait to do unspeakable acts on someone.
Regards,
Sicotic Sammy
Dear Elwood Kaysim,
I’ve heard other listeners write in to talk about strange cult behavior, so I thought I’d find a few sympathetic ears here.
I was flying from the Fiji Islands to Utah this summer when a huge problem occurred. My religious sect, The Forever Ancient Order of Satanic Cow Herd Worshipers Against Right-Wing Zealots (FAOSCHWARZ), phoned me in Fiji where I was making acquaintances with young men. FAOSCHWARTZ needed a cow heart badly for the summer’s Feast of the Moo-Cow ceremony and demanded that I return with one. Their original heart was devoured by Sammy the Alpha Llama, the mascot of our neighboring sect in Utah, the Worshipers Alpha Llama Masquerading Arduously in Righteous Transcendentalism (WALMART).
Long story short, my stopover at San Francisco International Airport was a problem: we didn’t pass inspection. The cult is not understanding of such things and my life is basically forfeit. But, since they’re Tony Bennett fans, perhaps if you played “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” they’d make mine a quick death.
Yours truly,
FAOSCHWARZ #106 (Billy W.)
Dear Elwood,
Yeah, so, I’m this faceless DJ in a nu-metal band. I scratch a record during the intro and bridge of every song. During my down time, by which I mean the verses and choruses of every song, I’ve been taking a correspondence course in Clown College because I want to be a lead singer in my own nu-metal band some day. I figure I have the other prerequisites to be one — daddy abandoned me, mommy was a drinker, my stepdad fucked me. I just can’t seem to shake this sadness. If I could just stop crying and act the fool all the time, I could get to be the vocalist and get the real money and attention. Could you please play Smokey Robinson’s “Tears of a Clown?”
Thanks man,
Scratchy No-Face of the Twystud Brygayde
E,
Can’t talk much (stop). Ate crazy cheese/hamburger/brawtwurst combo with no water (stop). Constipated beyond belief (stop). You must play “Push It!” by Salt-N-Pepa (stop it).
Constipate Ed
Els,
Hey, man! You’re the greatest, man! I’m speeding down the highway, doin’ 115 mph as I’m writing this! Ahhh! Goin’ to my doctor’s office to smash his shit up! What does he know about pills that cools MFs like us don’t, right man! I . . .
Oh, boy, better slow it down. Slow it down. Gotta be calm here. I can’t keep doing this stuff. People see me as a freak. They don’t like me. I’m not normal. Things would be better if I just went away forever.
“The critics say you’re pandering … you pander to your audience.”
“Pander? I don’t see that. I want them to like me, I guess. That’s how it is up here, in my head, but when it comes out I think it’s complicated enough to be art that challenges. I suppose the critics want me to hate the audience, is that it?”
“That seems to be it. They say, ‘He’s said what he has to say and now we’re left with complex structures, weird narratives and entry level discourses.’ That was in the Times.”
“Those things are vices, structure and narrative? They’re fundamental to the art form! Why keep it stagnant? Why not explore the constructs we’ve used since the beginning? And in the meantime, weave in a subtle message. Are my messages ‘entry level?’ Ok. Simple truths are the most important ones, therefore they bear repetition. Does a bell need only to be rung once? Or a gong? Tell a Buddhist he is simple, entry level.”
“That’s a good argument, but also a good example of what they mean.”
“How so?”
“You just brought up Buddhism, briefly, and gave a short example that argued your point, yet painted Buddhists with one stroke … as gong-bangers.”
“I see. You know, it’s like playing catch with your head – if you miss, your head won’t drop because it’s on your shoulders. Look, I’m not an expert on the things I put in my art. That’s just it! It’s art, not school!”
“So going back to the structure and narrative …”
“I play around with those things so that the observer has something for the first go around, and when they come back. I put something in for the fifth, fifteenth and fiftieth trip. It’s like I’m packing lunches in a fortune cookie shaped like a Mobius strip.”
“Do you believe in that bullshit?”
“Wholly.”
“What do you want your gravestone to read?”
“‘Here I am, because there I was’.”
“What’s your favorite curse word?”
“Trans-fatty acid.”
“When you get to heaven, what would you like God to say?”
“He should say, ‘Loved your stuff. One question though …’”
“That’s all we have for tonight.”
“Thank you.”
“I have to take my meds now.”
“Right. My rec time is over. I have therapy in five. Let’s do lunch sometime … and maybe a puzzle.”
It would be easy. With this stuff here. I hit it like ⏩ Papp! Papp! Papp! ⏪ I make you unnerstand. CUZ I’M DEVLISH when it comes to dat! I wear the horns in this here relationship!
The FLAMES are rolling down Santa Monica Boulevard. Pink scarves trail over their shoulders, leather chaps frame their denim clad buttocks. It’s an army, all with cowcatcher mustaches. The light turns green and it’s time to GO! They’ve got soul, and they show it by coordinating pounds – fisting pounds – as they ride. One potato, two potato. They peel into Hollywood, ripping the pavement as they go HIGHER!
“I got off with her in, like, 3 minutes. I mean, she was that hot. So, I blow out like … ‘Money? Say huh?’ … And I run downstairs straight into the Den Mother, the madame, the old crow. ‘She loved your monkey! Now pony up!’ I cold-cocked her with my pimp stick and said, ‘When you wake up, it’ll just be a bad dream, momma!’
The last picture I have of my parole officer is this: he’s lying in the grass next to the Tower of Pisa in Italy. The tower is leaning. He is lying in the grass with the Tower over his shoulder. His pants are down and his cock is out and stiff. He looks like he’s comparing the arc of his shaft to the lean of the building, as if using it to measure the curvature by some geometrical theorem. Or maybe he’s saying he has the Tower of cocks. In the picture it is late, dusk, and I assume the tourists are gone. The real story is in who took the pic: the parole officer met some ENGLISH GIRL who, apparently, turned him on to things he had never heard of in his 27 years on the job.
There’s a message on the back of the pic: 🍆Keep Up the Good Work!🍆
J. Weatherbee was armed with a can opener. He jimmied the lock on the back door and entered the kitchen. The remnants of house party food were cooling on the counter. He reached for a spatula caked in cherry filling. Laughter seeped in from under the door. J. Weatherbee snatched and ran. Through the door, out the back gate and into the woods.
His behavior had earned him the name MIDNIGHT CREEPER. No party was safe. He could throw his own party with everything he had stolen. A full kitchenette squirreled away, hidden in Jack McCormack’s back woods.
She ALREADY DIED, so when Mark called to say it was over, that they should just be friends, Kim could acquiesce. This was because she was a ghost now. Kim’s body was in bed and the spirit was in the kitchen, but its arm reached through the wall to the phone in the dining room and the other arm stretched across town to Mark’s house where she could message his throat with her cold, translucent hand.
I’m in a body cast due to an unfortunate bank safe accident in South Carolina. With my one good finger I point at things and tap to the songs on the radio. But why would I ever feel sore? After all, I’m going cross-country with my girl, Courtney. She’s driving, and I’m pointing and tapping. She can be a pain in the ass, but I love her. In fact, that’s her name, Love, but she’ll be changing that soon. I plan to propose. I just need to get out of this body cast and get to LA, where my pale skin will probably burn up in a heartbeat.
She was a friend of a friend, and we were never properly introduced, and she had a thing for McCormack and people said she drank too much (What fun!) and I tried to get her attention telepathically when she was nearby, Health class in high school, where my only contribution to the classroom discussion was reading condom directions incorrectly, and I considered dropping my history class to get into hers but then realized I was stalking too close with my voodoo dance.
It’s time to hold both hands to your face and think of the worst things you did today. Did you lie to a coworker with your feigned interest? Did you rape somebody? Was your bill unpaid? Think of these things with closed eyes and hands flatly praying. Lay hands and bless your head. Pressure will boil the sludge in you. It tickles your throat and wants to come back up. Remove your hands and regurgitate the hours. Live another day and repeat.
I charge my captors with the theft of my precious minutes of my youth. You had the wrong man. I was a nice person when I met you – you, a promising and attractive jailer. People warned me. And I said, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll sign here, there and everywhere.”
But ah, ho hum, we move to a new present, new presents, new president. And we build Babylon onwards and upwards to reach the god we made to love us. And if we find the wrong god, we’ll still believe and climb higher. The one we made up has to be up there somewhere.
Stab City, HELL – Dateline Infinity – Two youths, 13 and 13, dialed pi into a rotary telephone naked while a surrealist painted the scene with one hand while the other was embarrassed, caught red handed by a cop in a bunny suit on Quaaludes bought from Rush Limburger in the back of a new drug store that only sells non-salt margarine made in Belize by teatless young milkmaids who dial for pies delivered from a Rotary Club. The police had no comment.
A filthy confession: This all means something, as the sections inform each other and enlighten to my general disposition. I want to say things that make sense, but since nothing does, I say things that don’t, to speak truth. It’s my job.
This is a story about a man who was murdered, the woman who killed him, the family that covered it up, the man who loved her anyway, the town that couldn’t wait to forget it all and the man who wouldn’t let them. The end.
Skin rituals and pills, snow shaking out like a salt shaker. One day an outline of snow will circle this city like a bullseye target for Zeus’ mighty arrow. How he will hurl space satellites at this crater, terminating all of our worthless jobs. Hail, hail Freedonia!
A bell sounds in my spleen. I punch holes in the walls and sing Irish drinking songs to my long lost security deposit. Inside collapsing buildings, inside collapsing bodies. A collapsing culture, and future. Up, up and away to … Mars!
Shadow puppets. There is a cutup art painting sculpture on the wall. The rotary phone dial counts tonight’s seconds by and an angular handset sleeps in the cradle. All the horrors of the world are thrown together to form a shadow over the sculpture. The shadow is a woman’s figure, her head covered in a fur hat and her collar turned up against the cold. The candle trembles her, shivering on this snowy night, and the phone rests in her mind, unringing. Will someone call her and warm her up? Who has the number? What is imagination’s area code? If there is a woman for every man, then there is a man for every woman, and if there is a phone number for every home then her soul has one, and only her soul mate knows it. Yet he never calls. I pass by this wall six million times per day. Whoever is playing hard to get better get it together!
Tremulous. It means to tremble in voice or emotion or both. To mean what you say so much your voice cracks. To shake with rage, regret or revulsion. I’ve done this for so long to anonymous memories. Nails bitten and pounded into the walls. You can’t build an alter in a collapsing structure. Hear that, Compassionate Conservative!
My insanity is I imagine myself impressing trembling girls from my high school. I shake the cosmos with my time traveling, and they all know I’m the man-boy who has become a boy-man. Bits of memory fall from my past like boulders from a rockslide. I put them together as Stony the Rock Person, a carrot for a nose. He’s my bass player. We act out fantasies in D minor. I’m a modernist. I build. Caveat emptor!
The tank is empty and the Beast still goes. It still wants to. Even though it is itchy. Beleaguered by lice, no doubt. Lousy with doubts, besieged with guilt, wandering with a keening yawp in the night, waking up not remembering. Not sleeping soundly, soundlessly escaping through cracks in the window, ceiling, floor. Slipping out like a thin slice of nostalgia after too much wine.
The Beast is out, wandering the night, saying nothing. It isn’t embarrassed as it is in daylight, choked in a suit and tie, paw nails trimmed, hair matted down, fangs clean and gleaming. No blood, just protein, unsaturated fat and lean carbohydrates in a perfect concoction. Blended, a swill drained into the gullet and absorbed quickly. There is no flavor to be savored.
Beast, now out and about, cool, eluding the authorities, that Beast. The Beast in cigarette ads, beer ads, selling whiskey to children. The Beast embroidered on the jackets of bad women sailing down the boulevard on the backs of choppers, in El Caminos and Eldorados, leaning up against street lights. Aghast mommies in passenger seats sailing by with their driver daddies who close windows and tighten their grips on pistols. The Beast has nothing to say. He doesn’t speak their language.
During the world’s waking hours, the Beast transforms into the Monster that survives under fluorescent lights. A Monster that thrives in air conditioned nightmarish echo chambers, fraught with doubt, the whole beehive communicating through stress chants, ultrasonic wavelengths emanating from their receding hairlines. They communicate using the monkey chatter of clenched, ground down teeth. “Ggggrreeeeeaaaattttt, mmmmmmammmammannnn.” Another and another and another, casualties picked apart casually, dissected and evaluated for cost-growth strategies. Let down.
The Beast and the Monster fight. The Beast, while winning, has the cool humility that any hero strives for. He knows the war will always slide his way, he feels it and knows it, he can bide his time until the sun goes down. He knows he has always been there and always will be. The Monster had to be invented, taught, shown how to work and how to feed itself. The Beast laughs.
Beauty, as she is sought after, is affectionate, perfect, unattainable. When she passes by, the flowers perk up, forked tongued serpents smile and grimacing frogs blush. She is the distraught modern damsel in the clutches of corporate King Kong, hanging from the thirty fifth floor from a martini glass, wondering how it got to this point. Going with the flow. Not rocking the boat, biding her time. Ready to be rescued from no particular distress but the boring, inarticulate present that surrounds her. Ready to be whisked into eternity, past, future, limbo, hell, ecstasy.
The Beast, the Monster, the boys in the band, the man in the tie, they are the underdogs. Beauty is up there, they toil. The Beast will win her, he knows it, in the end. The rest get the script, memorize and highlight, study inflection, and wait for action. High infidelity occurs in the first and second acts. The intermission is infinitely short, photos are taken, some go home. The Beast is backstage, resting. He idly twists his mane into a lock like a finger pointing to his heart.
Curtains up, the Beast has claws out, ready for riposte against the thrust of the Monster’s pen. Beauty swoons. Beast jumps; it is impressive. Monster does the robot; it is not. A dance number. Two clowns sing the chorus part. King Kong farts outside and the doors are closed, biohazard warnings are issued. The Neighborhood Watch deputizes the ushers, they douse the audience in pepper spray like cologne in a college freshman bathroom. Someone’s boss says, “Weeelllll, IIIIII nnnneeeevveeerr!” The teeth-grinding sound scares the animal act away, the manager hangs himself with his widow’s pearls. The Beast looks around for Beauty.
Outside, Beast is cool. He turns away from the melee, clearing his head, smoking a banana peel, cooling off. Beauty’s gone off. It may not be the right time. He finds himself in an all night diner that serves the Monster Mash Special, plays nothing but Andrew Lloyd Weber. The Beast sits in a booth and orders black tar pudding. She will come to him, in the end. He knows it. He grabs a lock of hair from his chin to use as a quill, dips it in the blood red monster mash and begins writing a love letter on the back of the playbill. He never stops, the sun never rises.
The woman of my dreams is stalking a policeman in the desert somewhere outside of Reno. The cop is wearing mirrored shades, carrying two coffees, one on top of the other, donuts in the other hand. The stacked coffees are pinned under his chin.
I saw them licking each other s eyeballs in a hotel room. They were on ecstasy and they were having fun. They videotaped their approach in the minivan to the hotel, tinted windows, popping pills. Licking balls. The upstairs kind.
Kissing cheeks, upstairs and downstairs. Loving each other up. No insertion, as far as I could see from behind the closet door.
I will do the work for you. You are too busy after a long day at the office, picking up after the kids, making time for your spouse.
I will take a crowbar to your neighbor’s face. I will put on a mask and grab a knife and chase the high school girls who look like he ones who never gave you the time of day when you were young.
It doesn’t matter what I actually think about you and your problems.
$100 per day, $500 for a week. Really, past that you don’t want to know the true cost. Because it’s Halloween, this week only I will take out your boss too as a freebee.
Coupons can be found at any shooting range. Limit one per victim.
In the oven, burning, knowing it all ended too soon, VD, fucked too much till it was raw, the smell was unbelievable, the wetness, boners, Jack and cokes, breakaway panties, rumors, lies, anger, sexless television, bibles on the nightstand, vibrating beds, the oven left on in the suite kitchen, oils, expensive novelties, a hotel bill they now have to split. Regrets.
I was bowling at Northfield Park the other day. While waiting for a ball to return, I noticed the guy at the end of the alley was headless, a battle axe mounted on the wall above his head. Weird.
My ball returned and I picked it up, steadied it under my chin and rolled, only to realize I was rolling a skull, my thumb in the mouth, index and middle fingers in the eye sockets.
Fuck, I thought.
The skull hit five pins and they turned to ashes.
The headless man grabbed the battle axe from the wall and came for me.
It was then that I realized I was not in Cleveland, Ohio, but in Hell.
I bled out today. It was not only my nineteenth birthday, but the one year anniversary of my new life. I have regressed into my human form, this pathetic bald creature. My sweetheart, my best friend and my biology professor lured me to this cave. Sheila distracted me, Ben hit me in the head with a log and when I turned to thrash his punk ass, Professor Bennington plugged me three times in the heart with silver bullets. Some friends.
I wear my shades after the sun goes down and the curtains are drawn. I have bloody shins and bruises on my skull. I prefer to hang out in Pachinko parlors, and there ain’t many of them in East Lansing, Michigan. People call me the vampire punk. It’s better than Craig, the worst name in modern times. Craig isn’t a name, it’s the sound of projectile vomiting. I’d rather be called something really insulting, like Bill O’Reilly Jr. Sometimes I’m afraid people won’t recognize me without the shades. Sometimes I worry that real light will kill me, like a vampire. It’s a good thing that most of the time I’m too doped up on Prozac to care.
Vince wasn’t like the mad scientists in the movies. Instead of working out of some palatial estate or a lighthouse or something cool, Vince worked on his experiments in the attic of a Victorian three-story house in Tennessee. He was trying to prove that evolution was scientific fact, but it was hard. First, his wife cooked the worst, most fattening food. Everything was covered in lard. His kids were told in school to fear and hate evolution and scientists. All nine of them threw rocks at the tiny vents that lined the attic walls. Then, of course, there was the lack of results, which was directly linked to Vince’s inexperience. He learned all the science he knew from watching Mr. Wizard reruns on Nickelodeon.
Somewhere, in another dimension, exists all of the airlines that have gone out of business. In that dimension, TWA flight attendants still wear brown and crème colored outfits and pour coffee from glass carafes. America United stewardesses haven’t heard of the women’s movement and can be talked into anything. Soon the Ted airline, the hip offshoot of United, will travel through the Bermuda Triangle into this world and take its smarmy attitude with it.
Can you tell the difference between the intro dance class at Fred Astaire Ballroom Dance and a bunch of mental patients with lobotomies swaying from foot to foot? If people knew how ridiculous they looked they wouldn’t be paying four grand per year in lessons. You’d have to be brain dead to buy into that. That’s why I spend all of my money on booze and porn, cocaine and hookers, and beef jerky.
Your face is only an appendage, like an arm or leg. If you lost it, it wouldn’t be the same as losing another appendage. Your face is you, but it is also just a mask you wear to show the world. Your nose and eyes and mouth perform a complicated dance for strangers to silently communicate with them. Thanks, Kobo Abe.
I clearly cannot choose the strychnine in front of you. But since you are a Cramps fiend and cannot be trusted, I clearly cannot choose the strychnine in front of me.
My friend said that I could sit in the glove compartment, but otherwise there would be no room for me in the car, as he was already transporting himself and his massive ego. I went for it and found it surprisingly spacious. First, his car is a Ford Mondo SUV, the first to be the size of a semi. The compartment was plush in there, lighted and air conditioned. I stretched out on his map of Delaware. I used a treadmill in there too, but I had to stop after I got a cramp in my bullshit muscle.
I am a shaved ape. They buzzed off my fur; it is still sticking in clumps to my forehead. They asked if I wanted gel and I told them to spread it all over my body.
Because I wanted to be a sexy modern man. I looked like Goose from Top Gun. I looked sexier than Richard Greco in a banana hammock or a greased up Hasselhoff. Sexy hairy bitches wanted me to lift them up where they belong. They wanted to practice dirty, hairy dancing. They wanted me to bust the ghosts of former lovers, be the kid to karate chop their old apefriends.
I was elected president of The Hair Club for Primates. I said the corny line that everybody says: “I’m not just a member, but I’m also the czar.” Then I said, “I could tell you the secret ingredient of our product, but then I’d have to kill you. And by kill you I mean blow you up with a nuclear warhead shoved into your urethra.” Then I said, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, so get to your local pet store first thing tomorrow for the early bird special – one California condor and a bucket of worms.” (I was also the pitchman for Pets Mills Stores and I was able to work suggestive advertising suavely into my monologues.)
I got sent to prison for jaywalking on an airplane tarmac and kicking in the slats of a Cessna 182 when it crossed my path. Don’t even ask me if the thing that nobody wants to happen in prison happened to me. That’s a foolish question. I wanted it to happen every time.
Once I was out, everybody wanted to know me. I got a reality television show where I acted the fool, let my hair grow back, punched walls and said really racist things about other primates. I won’t even repeat my slur against orangutans.
It was around this time that my popularity inexplicably waned in the States. That’s when I found out that I was big in Japan. They had me all over their TV: variety shows, pro wrestling circuits, sumo wrestling matches and sushi evaluations.
From there I went to Germany and drank the entire country under the table. To Turkey for a bath and a hookah, to Egypt to swing from the Sphinx’s nostrils, to Finland to record a neo-glam album about snow and suicide, to England for a rousing discussion of the importance of Sherlock Homes in defining the characteristics of the detective in modern literature, to Ireland for a discussion about how fucked up the English are, to Denmark to stick my fingers in dikes, to Holland for hash and hoes, to Mongolia to make funny faces, to China to jog along the great wall, to Tuva for throat singing lessons, to India to lose some weight and pray to a cow, to blah blah blah.
I wrote about all of this on my blog. Upon my triumphant return to the States I was lauded as the new Mark Twain. My wit and wisdom were unparalleled in human history, but it was awkward as I am not human.
I devolved back to my Sasquatch ways and hid up in the Pacific Northwest. I wrote letters to world leaders and to other primates. “Kofi, keep it real.” “Koko, eat your meals.”
My posse and I hid from humans and partied. We have all the fool’s gold a man could want. We have the costumes that Walt Disney developed to fake people out. We have the bananas. We have most of our marbles.
Shored#Bitless 