In The Parlour, Darkly

In the darkness, I stubbed my naked toe against some table or chair leg or another and cursed a blue streak. My crow was so loud as to be considered mythic and who's to say I wasn't, in those imperceptible seconds after my injury, when my senses blurred and the electricity of my brain shorted for an instant, hanging in the limbo of that infinite moment between life and death so like a crimson-visioned orgasm (ooh la-la!). Of course, it was only later that I contemplated this tiny connection betwixt pleasure and pain and the resultant, if temporary nirvana achieved with the proper alternating doses. My immediate thought was hatred for all heavy wooden furniture. That, and Damn! My toe!

Since Before It Was Cool

I’ve been considering a sad variety of creature that thrives in a metropolitan context such as Los Angeles, California. The sort of greasepaint monster who takes the epoch to heart; who honestly believes in trying anything and everyone at least once. He do some lines with Billy C. in the bathroom of a big city small club and she do this with imagined nobility, as a specimen of the age- a beacon atop the cliffs of the fashion du monde. A god amongst mortals! An alien amongst the cattle and thinking they are so original. Meanwhile, I’m at the stall behind you, correcting my aim. Go back to Rome, Caligula. Run home to Mama, Venetian. Die, you Libertine, in some rat-strewn London brickwork alleyway. Oh, I’m sorry. I really should watch where I point this thing.

I am available for children's parties, by the way."

-Bill Hicks

Out On My Asgard

I had been to the Low Key earlier that evening. Whilst there I decided to try something new. I ordered a trademarked mixture of the establishment, a cocktail bearing the designation Odin’s Folly. It tasted of honey and thunder. I finished the first; enjoyed another, lavishing in my recent boon whilst quietly cursing myself for being such a wastrel. My sorrows were quickly and deliciously drowned. I threw my dosh on the bar and sipped from a final Folly. I half remember staggering outside a short time later with my eyes closed, throwing back my angry skull and hanging my mouth open to chase the potent elixir with a few swallows of rain-water. The next afternoon, I awoke, suffering the All-Father of hangovers, promising aloud to the empty air never to touch a drop of the demon liquor again. This was a familiar oath.

“Money takes wings. The only thing that endures is character.”

-O.J. Simpson

Great Balls Of Fire

Unlike the Impuritan and his aesthetes, whom think of humanity as balls of mud and shit, I like to imagine this plucky little race as cauldrons of star-fire covered and contained in very heavy metal. So full of potential if only we can manage to blow our tops now and again.

“Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work.”

-Bette Davis

Donkey's Bottom

Bruce Brilliant started his routine with butt jokes few and outright; to clear the air, as it were. He was a buffoon of a positive cleverness whose act I followed religiously over the course of three months, once upon a distant Summer.

“You can't stay mad at somebody who makes you laugh.”

-Jay Leno

Backwards God

The night was steam and burning oil and all was still for precious minutes. How many now? How many seconds remained of peace? How many more before the din and furor began again? This was Crooked Rooster. This was the bad part of town. Along these cobblestones, nightmares crept. Curious shadows thrown from candlelit doorways. Were they enemies grappling throats or lovers bringing their partner in for a kiss? Was that noise cried out in passion or in pain? None of my business, I hurried past each break between the dark and labyrinthine alley-ways with my head low and my hand on my hat. I dared not make suppositions or pause along my quickening way to draw conclusions concerning the shadow‘s play. Be they the shapes of death or desire I could not hesitate to consider. I was searching for a particular door set in a certain alcove at a precisely memorized locale. My mission in the Rooster was explicit. I was there to see a man about a dog.

" I don't know what my path is yet. I'm just walking on it."

-Olivia Newton-John

A Glimmer In the Darkling World

“…Afraid of my own shadow in the face of grace
Heart full of darkness spotlight on my face
There was love all around me but I was lookin' for revenge
Thank God it never found me would have been the end…”

-Tightrope by Stevie Ray Vaughn

She was a beauty to me from the start. An earth goddess from some unfamiliar Gypsy pantheon. I was drawn to her gentle lips and something about her mouth which always forced bare her gleaming teeth, unleashing the most joyous and pleasant smile the world will ever know. Well, dear reader, I had my suspicions, later confirmed, about that grin. Her signal of joy was more that simple amity. It was the sheer ecstasy of recent freedom. Jennifer Devlin had escaped some great and terrible affair. Disarmed with this knowledge, I found myself for some time unable to bear the physical symbol of her release, captured terribly and completely in the brilliant orbit of that shining sun.

Bits and Bobs

“A lot of people believe that if everybody just did what they were told - obeyed - everything would be fine. But that's not what life is all about. That's not real. It's never going to happen.”

-Matt Groening

As it happens frequently in my life, I freely admit that during the time I was becoming acquainted with the Professor and his meticulous brand of madness, I was a creature of low habits. However I was also the hero, at least to Richard, on many occasions, not the least of them being those times Mangrove needed some bit of bob not easily acquired in the shallow social pools to which he was most accustomed. I’m frankly surprised he made the acquaintance of the certifiably ingenious engineer, Sean “Mister Hex” Hexed, before I did. Of course, it could be that Richard Mangrove was and remains a cosmic magnet for we freaks of the natural order. Not a very scientific notion. The Professor would no doubt be less than comfortable acknowledging such a strange suggestion yet he keeps surrounding himself with odd creatures like Mister Hex and myself. Personally, I think he likes getting his rigidly trained sense of how the universe is supposed to work challenged and shaken on a regular basis. Such an intellectual masochist!

I'm 7 Feet Tall, Jerks

“I’m very much an optimist. I don't think I could do my work if I didn't believe there was some kind of hope for humanity.”

-Sandra Bernhard

His name was Richard Mangrove. To this day I find his surname hilariously appropriate. Himself a sort of fellow I hadn’t seen since the previous century. Richard had an entertaining mouth, thin and serious yet easily curving into the most genteel of smiles. He had such hands and feet as aesthetically befitted a man of scientific wonders like himself, with long slender fingers and a step high and wide. He was eighty-four inches tall without his hat and upon first gazing upon the good Professor I imagined likewise his boots must carry him seven leagues with every swing of his tree-like legs.

The Filth and the Funny

I was born in Bakerville, except I wasn’t. A spoonful of research will show that I was born in Baker, Oregon in 1971. Except I was not. Dig a little further and you’ll see me pop up in a few other impossibly incongruous locales and datelines both before and after my most popular entries. Except, you know, I may or may not have ever been. Hospitals burn. Records are forged. Experts are bought and witnesses are elaborated. Ain’t I a stinker? In one account, I was even a horse! I can assure you I never was a horse. I have been a ghost and I often a traveler through the vibrational multitudes. I have been a fiend and I remain a gentleman. Some years back, I was wanted, dead or alive, as the Prairie Wolf, but I have never, ever been a horse. Wait, was I? I was almost a mule but that’s an entirely different creature, isn’t it? I got out of that one, thank Eris! Nope. Never once a horse. I’m glad we had this little chat. Oh, and by the way, do you ever feel like you’re being swindled?

“…We can do magic in these times
be what we want to be
We'll all be rock 'n' roll stars
immortal on TV
And if you see me looking tired
I've just been sleeping thought the day
But I got something to keep me agitated
So we can dance the night away…”

-Nineteen Forever by Joe Jackson