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
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
Fifteen years ago, British Airways delivered me to Vienna for the first time. Recently promotions by the UK flag carrier reminded me of that particular visit, my last flights before insane Koran perverting Islamists provoked the security theater air passengers now must endure.
Dovetailing nicely, it’s simply coincidence that Vienna is also the site where the West thwarted the Ottoman conquest of Europe. Any and all fretting about Western Civilization being swamped by Muslim hordes needs to brush up on his or her history.
If it was done then, it can surely be repeated if need be. Continue reading Spittelberg
Given a most coincidental of chance reencounters, Trevor and Lesley, long-ago lovers, have erased the years and resumed their intimacy. Revelations and observations between them are as naked as their post-coital state.
Lesley stood at the hotel window. Some activity occurring outside in the Southern Arizona night intrigued her. She gazed out, her back to Trevor. The autumn hour mild, their exertions having singed the sheets and heated the four walls, the couple had cracked the window wide.
Ambient city noise rose up to the sixth floor and lapped over the sill inside. Light from exterior sconces clearly illuminated Lesley’s front. Dimmed room lamps threw her side into shadow and cast her rear in murk.
Trevor appraised her still pleasing figure from the bed. Reclining there legs loosely crossed, one arm thrown behind his head on pillows, the other along his side, he addressed Lesley’s back.
“Say, wasn’t there a time you wouldn’t have been caught dead standing in front of an open window stark naked?” Continue reading Saludade
A continuation from Intrigue the Boy …
At the appointed time on the anointed day Trevor cooled on Delores’ doorstep. With the Arizona campus having depopulated over the weekend, he eagerly looked towards Monday.
It was strange seeing her at noon. Then again, he was lightly clothed on a mid-March day. Same time back East, he likely wouldn’t have been lightly clothed inside, much less outdoors. Continue reading Three Kimonos
Marvelous recent story from Germany demonstrates American thinking isn’t alone in being palsied by corrosive political correctness.