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
Why did the metal sculptor Klanger and I settle on calling Anne “the Modigliani Girl”? Certainly it is at best an obscure reference.
But as we both immediately agreed, she resembled a Modigliani creation rendered in flesh. Amazing how two strangers who slept with the same woman became copacetic from the jump.
We also determined that facile men would not have found her alluring. I use alluring because attractive harkens to some common beauty notion. Or as spoken in these days, “beauty metrics.”
Anne wouldn’t have met those standards.
Her distinctions lured us. Being objective, she consisted of features that shouldn’t have meshed as they somehow did. Continue reading The Modigliani Girl Occidentals Objectified
One is deluged with business cards here in Las Vegas. It’s no exaggeration. In nearly four years of Nevada residence I’ve had more cards pressed into my palm than throughout the 30-plus professional years in Metropolitan New York.
Sad to report I’ve rarely reciprocated. I’m picky about with whom I exchange contact information. Continue reading The Modigliani Girl
Certainly we’ll all notice Islam has frightened a good portion of Anglo-America. Until the attacks most of those now afraid couldn’t have named a Muslim outside of Muhammad Ali. Today the quivering and trembling can list chapter and verse every depredation Islam has prepared for the Christian West.
Especially the ones which only exist in the most fevered imaginations.
By the way, after the attacks one of the reasons presented for the date chosen was an in your face gesture to the nation’s emergency service responses. Who does 911 call on 9/11?
Islamists are nowhere near as witty. Instead, the date commemorates an important battle between Christianity and Islam. A conflagration more vital than the Crusades and the Reconquista combined. One persevered faith. The other was thwarted for all time. Continue reading Meet the Strangers
Remarkable, isn’t it, how many Anglos are fearful of a Muslim threat against America that doesn’t exist? At least not in this hemisphere. For this Americans of all hues and creeds can thank the civil rights movement.
All that marching, picketing, and boycotting we may now download and view in digitalized black & white equalized a lot of boats. The movement also brought into the mainstream a good number of immigrants whose origins sat outside what too many of our native born citizens saw as acceptable lands of heritage.
Southern and Eastern Europeans performed their obligations towards integration while assimilating, but having reassuring complexions and religious beliefs somewhere near the country’s predominant Christianity also eased their entry into society. The civil rights movement is the reason why the United States shouldn’t suffer Europe’s same level of random violence nor the polarization between Muslims and non-believers.
American society has yet to impose the same weight of frustration on the Muslim community. But Donald Trump and his gang are doing their damnedest to recoup lost time. Continue reading Fear Eats Itself