A stalled car starts this 2018.
My wheels must’ve been equipped with artificial intelligence of the devious kind. An ’02 Mercury that has under 64,000 miles on its odometer, my car’s prime directive is planned obsolescence. Continue reading Ghost Warranty
One aspect of our society we should hope never succumbs to speed, convenience or economy is the habit of exchanging Christmas cards. The real paper ones sealed inside envelopes, bearing stamps, and dropped in mailboxes.
Unlike the rotary phone, black & white televisions, and phonographs, inventions that became consumer goods which progress raced by and rendered obsolete, printed cards delivered via surface mail, bearing stamps, contained in covers carrying the sometimes nearly indecipherable scrawls of well-meaning senders who held the recipients in worthy esteem, are worthwhile remnants of our less instantaneous time.
They reflected humanity. Ours. Continue reading Christmas Prisms
Were Time magazine founding publisher Henry Luce still alive, the man who’d coined the 20th century “the American Century” would today declare any extension of it dead.
Our epoch of true world influence stretched from the Jazz Age until Bolshevism collapsed under capitalist superiority. Although our Levant fiasco significantly diminished the nation’s prestige while emboldening adversaries, much of the global community still accepted the United States as the planet’s cock of the walk.
After wrong-footing throughout 2017, the only standing America retains is being musclebound and brainless. Continue reading Magnificent Arrogance
Alas Poor Bryce. His prick led him astray.
He failed heeding warnings. He let his little man override advice from older, less susceptible men.
Bryce succumbed to Donna’s cajoleries. Pleasurable as he found their screwing, what happened afterwards severely screwed him. Continue reading Donna Erupts
Schlockmeisters believing themselves quality horror purveyors need to set up campfires that burn holes into patches of the darkest nighttime woods extant. Amid this pitch black setting, using remedial storytelling lessons, they should huddle around the flames and rediscover what truly jolts audiences.
They can start by reciting “The Monkey’s Paw” then diagram why the story still tingles. Continue reading The Willies
Yeah. O.J. Simpson was at his ex-wife’s house the night she and her boyfriend were slaughtered. He didn’t kill them. The Juice arrived late. How long after the fact? Who knows?
Does the pro football hall of famer, former actor, ex-pitchman know who killed Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman? No. He only has suspicions. These are best for setting investigators off on the wrong trails, having them hound those at the end of inevitable lines if logic.
Just because it’s logical doesn’t mean it’s right. Left to enough people, a syllogism would’ve sufficed to have convicted O.J. Simpson of murder. Continue reading An Idol, Not a Hero
We never called Anne the Modigliani Girl or even “Shadow,” her stripper alias, to her face. Klanger and I should’ve. She might’ve gotten a kick out of it. Continue reading The Ménage of the Modigliani Girl
Observed and evaluated. That’s the sole commonality Klanger and I shared with Anne’s peculiar Japanese clientele.
They fetishized their relations with her. We simply enjoyed ours. Continue reading The Modigliani Girl Acquires a Harsh Master
Absent in person, Anne materialized between Klanger and me in spirit. Didn’t we almost expect her to emerge at Rick Blaine’s Place and simply gesture that one of us light the cigarette she’d jammed into its holder?
Oh, yes. A minor affectation, her cigarette holder. A narrow three-toned contraption spun in onyx, silver and ivory stages. Part of her Madame Sin persona no doubt. With the right, um, suitor, the wand could become a conversation piece.
Whether Anne used it to reduce the tobacco’s effect, liked the way it made her look, or as a prop that somehow lessened the unseemliness behind the pursuit of what a much higher percentage of those living outside Las Vegas might’ve seen as an unsavory practice, it was an effective distraction that deepened interest in her. Maybe I should’ve asked but why must all mysteries be solved? Continue reading Deeper into the Modigliani Girl
Let me liken entering Rick Blaine’s Place to delving into the blackest night. Particularly on sun-blasted Las Vegas afternoons. Continue reading The Modigliani Girl Appears