Quodlibet (Part 1)

The cops came looking for me the morning after the big storm. They found me standing on a stack of overturned milk crates, a leaf in one hand, bottle of super glue in the other, surveying the damage to my prized ornamental plum tree. My old pal Detective Diaz and some uniformed greenhorn stood at a respectful distance, watching me work.

“What’s he doing?” whispered the uniform.

“Well,” said Diaz, smirking as usual, “I’d say he’s gluing the leaves back onto a plum tree.”

“He’s only got one glued back, so far…”

“He’s not the kind of guy who’d just glue any leaf on any old stem, Flanagan. They have to go back exactly where they came from.”

“But that’s… crazy…”

“Crazy, rookie? No. It’s exactly the kind of attention to detail we need on a case like this.”

Taking this as my cue, I hopped off the milk crate tower and landed on the wet grass of my front lawn with a resounding squish. “A case, Diaz? Why didn’t you say so?”

“As if you weren’t listening all along, Martin. Pretty sure it’s murder. Down at Mission Bay. Hop in the car, I’ll drive. You might want to explain what you do to ‘Flanagan’ here on the way. I don’t think he’s sold on it yet.”

“Flanagan? Says ‘Schmidt’ on his uniform.”

“Sure,” said Diaz. “He’s Flanagan. All cops are Irish. Didn’t you know that? Officer Flanagan, meet Carlton Martin, forensic… uh… whatever.”

That had to be one of the clearer explanations of my talents that I’d ever heard. The word “psychic” comes close to explaining my abilities, but the word inspires either complete rejection, or the usual set of unrealistic expectations. Such old standards as mind reading, telekineses and astral projection don’t fall into my repertoire. Diaz was hoping that I could help him solve this case by gazing into the eyes of a murder victim and viewing the last person or thing the corpse had seen in life. How it works is a mystery even to me, but it had helped Diaz clear seven murders in the past four years, so he wasn’t complaining. Diaz was a real pragmatist. Flanagan, on the other hand, wasn’t buying any of it. With a sigh, I made a mental note to get new cards printed up: “Carlton Martin – Whatever”.

Our drive to the crime scene was delayed by blocked traffic. Seems a semi and a Mini-Cooper had carommed off each other on the westbound 8 at Taylor Street. The truck had been carrying a shipment of vintage marbles, which now covered all four lanes in a glittering carpet of aggies, cat-eyes, clammies, bumblebees and puries. The Mini-Cooper had been carrying a goat in the passenger seat; the goat in question was now trying to make its way across the freeway, pursued by a number of CHP officers and orange-vested freeway workers. None of them made much progress, thanks to the thousands of tiny glass spheres beneath their feet and hooves. Flanagan fidgeted in his seat as I tried to explain my sideline as a sin-eater. Diaz spent the entire time guffawing loudly at the spectacle before us. He hated the CHP for some reason. I’d asked him about it once. All he’d said was, “Fuck Eric Estrada.” Good enough for me.

Nearly an hour later, we reached our destination. The storm had hit the bay with astounding force. All sorts of inexplicable debris bobbed in the water. Trying to take it all in at once was like trying to crawl into a Mad comic book panel drawn by Will Elder, circa 1952. Lawnchairs, forgotten umbrellas, a Chargers jersey bearing the number twenty-one, a fluffy white lamb trying to do the Australian crawl, several retired UFC fighters and a large wooden sign bearing the legend “Welcome to Clarkston, Michigan” all bobbed in the murky water, surrounded by indiscernible shapes of every size and color.

“That’s not the crime scene, is it, Diaz? Too much information, if it is.”

“Don’t sweat it. The scene itself is fairly discrete.”

Reluctantly, I hauled myself out of Diaz’ town car and followed him down to the water’s edge. “Flanagan” was a bit taller than either of us and got there first. Staring at the remains that bobbed, half beached, in the shallow water, he fell to his knees and began to weep. Catching up, I saw that the body belonged to a dolphin. It had been completely flensed. Flanagan remained on his knees, moaning the word “Flipper” over and over again. They were a sadly underrated band, true, but this hardly seemed the time for punk nostalgia. There was a case to be solved.

Taking charge, I outlined my investigative plan. “The suspect – or, more likely, suspects – are probably Japanese, probably in some sort of seaworthy craft with a harpoon mounted…”

“Ahem.” Diaz was giving me that look he gets sometimes. “Stop right there. How many times do I have to tell you that the SDPD doesn’t profile?” Then he threw back his head and laughed. It took him quite a while to stop. “The body is over there.”

Diaz pointed to a palm tree a short distance away. I left Flanagan with the dead sea mammal and stepped over to this new crime scene. Sure enough, there was a human body lying beneath the tree, head in the tree’s roots, its feet a few inches from the water. The victim was quite short, which had spared his or her expensive Italian shoes from a saltwater drenching. The body was dressed in a beautiful expensive gray suit, custom tailored, complete with vest and cufflinks. The only thing keeping it from winning Best Dressed Corpse of 2010 was a painful sartorial anomaly: a large straw hat with an impossibly wide brim covered the victim’s head and most of the upper chest.

“Hmmm,” I mused. “That’s one of those mariachi hats, right?”

“Sombrero,” said Diaz. Then he repeated it slowly for my benefit. “Sommmmbrerrrrr-oh.”

“Som-BRAY-ro,” I dutifuly echoed.

“Just call it a mariachi hat, okay?”

“Okay. This should be easy.” Whipping out my trusty adjustable eyelid retractor, I knelt down to do that voodoo that I do do so well. Ever helpful, Diaz bent down and removed the mariachi hat with a graceful sweeping motion.

“Shit,” he muttered. “Not that easy.”

The body had no head.

“Yes,” I agreed. “No head, no eyes, nothing I can do here.”

“He wasn’t killed here,” said Diaz.

“Obviously. I’m thinking the decapitation was post-mortem. And the victim was dressed after the decapitation. Notice… the neck wound is ragged, but look at his tie.”

Diaz reached down and flipped over the corpse’s silk tie, which bore a pattern of slickly shimmering squid. “Jerry Garcia… never liked his music, but he designed some pretty decent ties – for a goddam hippy. But what’s your point?”

“It should be obvious. If the head had been sawed off after the body was dressed, that perfect double Windsor knot would be in considerable disarray.”

“You think it was done with a saw?”

“I’d say a six-and-a-half inch drywall jab saw. Sadly, not the right saw for the job. Probably took a while to finish it.”

“Then I really hope you’re right that this poor bastard was killed first.”

“Oh, I am. In fact…” A clicking sound in my jacket pocket interrupted me. Reaching into the pocket, I pulled out one of the essential devices I always carry with me. The clicking grew louder.

“What’s that?”

“Miniature Geiger counter. Never leave home without it.”

“What the….”

“Gamma rays, Diaz. Don’t you worry about gamma rays? I do.”

“Really, I….”

“You obviously haven’t read the literature on the subject that I have. Anyway, it seems the victim is slightly radioactive.”

“Gamma radiation?”

“Clearly not, or we’d be in a world of trouble. But yes, some sort of radiation. The reading is strongest at the stump.”

“So, now what?”

“Well, Diaz, I can’t really do much without the victim’s eyes. If the head doesn’t turn up, intact, within twenty four hours… I’m afraid I can’t be any help with this one. Sorry.”

“Not your fault, Martin. I’ll give you a ride home while the M.E. team wraps up the body. You’ll be paid for your time.”

We left Flanagan to dry his eyes and do his thing with a roll of yellow tape, and walked slowly back to the car. Diaz was lost in thought, pondering how to tackle a stone cold whodunnit without any help from his favorite whatever. As the car pulled out of the parking lot, a slight movement caught my eye. A hundred feet away from the body, a tall, thin blond woman emerged from behind a different tree and hurried across the wet grass towards the visitor center. She walked so fast I would swear to this day that she was hydroplaning. “Attractive,” I thought, “if a touch skinny. Wonder where she’s going?”

Like I said before, I’m not psychic in any traditional sense of the word.

+ + + +

To be continued…

My Education In Brief

This past week, 23,000 teachers were laid off in the state of California. Facebook users responded by posting thoughts about the teachers who were important to them. This is what I wrote.

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Getting Schooled in San Diego: 1968-1977

Wegeforth Elementary: fourth grade teacher Mr. Bush took the time to help a shy kid learn to play foursquare. He had a handlebar mustache with waxed tips. I don’t remember his first name, but his kindness endures.

Taft Junior High: I enrolled in a program called the Taft Interdisciplinary School (T.I.S.), which was run by a dozen or so dedicated teachers who worked together to integrate the curriculum and create a unique learning environment. I signed up at the end of sixth grade because I didn’t like school much and thought something different would be better. It was. So hats off to Russell Armstead (English), Bob Stein (social studies), and all the others. Cheers to Tom Stoup (English), who let me review comic books for class projects (hi, Tom!). Kudos to Mr. Bouchard (math), who never actually made good on his frequent threats to crush the heads of unruly students. And above all, love and respect to the late Carol Suley (English), who first encouraged me to write.

Kearny High School: Let’s first consider the school’s drama teacher, who lied to his students, manipulated them, and never returned the book of Shakespearean illustrations that I lent him to use for a poster. Perhaps he was just trying to prepare his students for a life in show biz with all its attendant betrayals, but no… he was just using us to capture some past glory he’d never had in the first place. He was also one of the few scabs at Kearny during the teachers’ strike of 1977. His name will not be mentioned. Why do I mention him at all? Because he remains one of the greatest negative role models of my life. What did he teach me? Not a thing about acting — but he gave me a clear idea of what sort of person I did not want to become as an adult. For that, many thanks.

On the flip side, there was Clinton Owen (“NOT Owens!”), physics teacher. I was a terrible physics student, but I learned a lot from this man. He started us off by teaching us about scientific theory, using Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision as his starting point. An image of the Hindu god Ganesh hung at the front of the class. He moonlighted as a church organist, but wore a tie with a big question mark on it when he did so. Throughout 1976, he read to us daily from the National Lampoon’s Bicentennial Calendar, which featured such gems of American history as the Sand Creek Massacre. When there was a fire drill, he would have us close the blackout curtains that hung in his classroom and just keep teaching. His true mission was to teach us all to be individual and independent thinkers, and he damn well succeeded. He was also legendary for biting the heads off squids when he worked as a biology teacher, but that was before my time. And on some memorable occasions, he took a break from teaching and played us his Tom Lehrer records.

French teacher Robert Leeds was another Tom Lehrer fan, but that surprise came rather late in my time with him. Mr. Leeds seemed a dour, intimidating man at first, and it was only towards the end of my time in his classes (two years’ worth) that I realized what a kind and caring person he truly was. I was a terrible French student. How I managed two years of French at Taft, and another two with Leeds at Kearny, still baffles me. I was really only there because there was always at least one girl I had a crush on. Towards the end of my time in his classes, he took me aside, clearly frustrated by my pathetic lack of progress, and suggested that I try reading La Chanson de Roland in Old French. Surprisingly, I took to it quite well, but the year soon ended and my attempts at learning any sort of French came to an end. One day towards the end of that year – mirabile dictu! – he gave us a free period – and out came the Tom Lehrer records. As we listened to the master parodist’s songs, amazed at this sudden, unexpected lenience, I saw a smile play across Mr. Leeds’ lips, and realized that perhaps his frustration was not born of our stubborn refusal to learn the language, but from his deep desire to share this beloved language with us. Years later I learned his story. Robert Leeds was an Alsacian Jew who was persecuted by the Nazis and eventually fled to England. Funding refuge and humanity in Leeds, England, he adopted that city’s name as his own. He was fluent in German, but refused to teach the language, despite repeated entreaties from school administrators. Over twenty years ago he took his own life. His reserve, I suspect, was born from a deeply wounded soul. I wish I’d been a better student for him.

Karen Stuverud, the speech teacher, was also very influential. When I first got up to speak in that class in tenth grade, I corpsed completely and excused myself from the podium. After three years of working with her in class and on the speech team, you couldn’t get me to shut up. I would never have had the nerve to take part in school plays if not for her. She introduced me to the works of Ingmar Bergman, and also kept the secret of the underground paper that some of us operated in our senior year. Students were all to her; administrators were just a barely necessary evil (a view shared by Owen with great vehemence).

In tenth grade, all of us alleged honors students were corralled in a double classroom separated by a large curtain. This oversized class was operated by Ramona Barksdale and Viletta Hutchinson. The class was usually split, but the curtains were opened for student presentations, usually readings of essays and other writing projects. (Of especial note, a certain Irish-American fellow’s speech about sexual innuendo in Shakespeare.) Mrs. Barksdale would often interrupt the beginning of a student’s performance with the piercing question “Where’s your thesis statement?” And when a student’s voice struck her as monotonous, she would drop that already basso profundo voice of hers down another notch and intone the order to “MODULATE!” That previous sentence would never have passed muster with her; in her world, one should never start a sentence with “and.” Along with Miss Hutchinson, she drilled the basic mechanics of writing into our heads in the course of a challenging and memorable year.

In eleventh grade, it was time for Advanced American Literature, a.k.a. AdvAmLit, taught by the redoubtable Peggy Kirby. To call Mrs. Kirby’s wit dry would be an understatement. Her influence on me was profound. She watered the writing seed planted in my brain by Carol Suley and it took root permanently. She could be quite withering, but her intent was always to teach, not to belittle.( It didn’t seem that way to Mike Chaparro the day she rebutted his defensive “But it’s my opinion!” with “But it’s a limp opinion.”) True, we had to read The Scarlet Letter in her class, but she made it relatively painless. She even endured a student presentation on the Beats, for whom she had little patience. And we wrote and wrote and wrote in that class. And then we wrote some more. And most, if not all, of us loved it. Speaking of love, Peggy Donohue (Chula Vista High School, Class of 1948) married her high school sweetheart John “Jack” Kirby (no, not that Jack Kirby) they year they graduated together. As far as I know, they still live in their beautiful Victorian house on Banker’s Hill. Time, I think, to pay them a visit. This essay might rate a B-minus on the Kirby scale, but I’m probably flattering myself.

Twelfth grade brought us back under the care of Miss Viletta Hutchinson, a very proper lady who slept exactly eight hours a night, and had once lived in the YWCA when she first moved to San Diego, back in some distant age beyond our comprehension. “Hutch,” as some of us affectionately called her (but never to her face), seemed impossibly old. Years later, I came across a 1948 Kearny yearbook in a used book store, and there she was on the faculty page: hair dark rather than gray, prim as ever, already an institution. When she passed away in 2003, she was just a few months shy of her ninety-first birthday; most of us probably thought she was already that old in 1976. She was never a “hip” teacher (and none of those have ever stood the test of time), but she was a real teacher, old school in every sense of the word, dedicated to her task and undeterred by shifting trends. Baffled as she was by our constant Monty Python references (notably during an in-class reading of Shaw’s Saint Joan, where we played the French soldiers as if they came right out of The Holy Grail) and other tomfoolery, she shepherded us with care and affection, and never wavered in the practice of her life’s calling.

Skipping ahead more than thirty years, I’d like to write a few words about another great teacher, my dear friend Elizabeth “Beth” Cullen. Miss Cullen, pink-haired and magical, teaches third grade. Many of her students speak little English; Beth, fluent in Spanish, nurtures them all. I know this because I have heard her speak of her students often over the years I have known her. I recently said to her, “You really love your students, don’t you? Even the bad ones.”

“Especially the bad ones,” she replied. And in that moment my mind finally realized what my heart had suspected all along: all these teachers (with perhaps one exception, but I wouldn’t bet money even on that) loved their students. Deeply. They don’t get paid what they’re worth, the hours they spend in class are nothing compared to all the work they do when the students aren’t there, and still they work to educate and to serve. They deserve better than the treatment they receive from the great state of California. They made us what we are. Why the hell do we shortchange them? Discuss.

Getting Schooled in San Diego, 1968-1976

Texas Turns to Comic Book Pros for Textbooks

Austin, TX – March 15, 2010
Terrain Vague News Agency

The Texas State Board of Education today announced its search for writers qualified to work with the new textbook guidelines established last Friday. Spokesman Carlton Forbush explained at a press conference held this morning at 11:30 a.m.: “We’re looking for a bold new approach to writing textbooks to go hand-in-hand with our bold new approach to history itself. The ideal candidate will be a writer with ten to twenty years’ experience in superhero comics.”

When asked to elaborate, Forbush was quite content to bloviate at length.

“Basically, we’re looking for someone with a strong background in retconning. Retconning, as you may already know, is the comic book technique of taking past storylines and altering or explaining them in a way that smooths over inconsistency with current continuity. We already have feelers out to Brian Michael Bendis, Grant Morrison, and a number of other top-notch comic book scribes.”

When asked for a more detailed explanation of the “retcon” concept, Forbush complied. “One example, I guess, is when Alan Moore revealed that Swamp Thing was not actually the late Alec Holland, but a mystical creature of great significance in the DC Universe; Holland’s body had merely been used as a template of sorts to create the Swamp Thing’s physical form. Question? You, in the third row. Have we considered Alan Moore? Christ, no! We’re not looking for Jim Bowie to be a bipolar cross dressing mass murderer with a heroin problem. Besides, he’s some sort of foreigner. Likewise, Frank Miller is out of the running as being too right-wing even for us. We had high hopes for Ed Brubaker, but…  well, Captain America 602 kind of blew his chances.”

“Next question? Some more retcon examples? Well, how about when the demon Mephisto ‘erased’ the 20-year-plus marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man a few years ago? Agreed, that did suck. Or like all that immortals-from-another-planet nonsense in Highlander II that was dropped from later films. But these are negative examples. What we’re looking for are positive retcons that reinforce the goals behind our new textbook guidelines.”

“Who would I like to see in the job? Personally, Geoff Johns. He did a lot of superb retcon work with Green Lantern… and besides, wouldn’t it be cool if Green Lantern saved the day at the Alamo? The possibilities are endless. It could turn out that illegal aliens are actually extraterrestrial aliens with an evil plan to destroy the great Republic of Texas. Thomas Jefferson meant well but was influenced by an evil alien parasite that steered him away from his true faith as a Southern Baptist. The New Deal never happened, it was just mass hypnosis.
Who knows — maybe Ronald Reagan was sent from Krypton to save Texas, along with all the other forty-three states.”

At this point, a reporter pointed out that Forbush was already doing a pretty good job of rewriting history, and asked if he’d consider taking the job himself.

“Me? Goodness no. We need to hire an established professional. It’s very important — essential, even — that this project have credibility.”

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Copyright © 2010 by Dan Whitworth

Rooftop Archaeology

The codex fragments are fragile to the touch, having been on the roof of my house since early in the last century. Dislodged from their rest during repairs, they fluttered to the ground in a shower of dust that I fear may have been other fragments, now lost to time. Two of the pieces in my possession fit together. The third does not, but is clearly part of the same narrative. Or, more aptly, narratives, as each fragment is two-sided, each displaying the work of a different artist. There are no signatures, but the styles are quite distinctive. Browned by years of exposure, the colors are still fairly clear, as are the black lines of the main figures. Their meaning is elusive.

One seems to be about a grandfatherly man, bald with a large white mustache that covers his mouth, who struggles in vain to reason with someone on the phone. The other party says “Tell Ashur to fetch my tennis racket when he comes to the club.”

The old man says, “Listen, gal, Ash ain’t…” but the other, presumably female, party ends the conversation before he can make his point. The rest is too fragmentary to make sense. Who is Ashur? Who is the old man? And who is the mysterious “gal” on the other end of the line? One part stands out: a few words are set in type rather than drawn by hand, but they are incomplete. All I can make out are the words “and Her Pa”… the last letter is truncated, but seems to be the main stem of a lowercase K, B or perhaps an L.

And her Pak? And her Pab? And her Pal?

The last one makes more sense than the others. If that’s the case, who is “her Pal”? Ashur? The old man? The “gal” on the phone? Without further evidence, I cannot even begin to speculate. As for who “her” is, there is not a single clue.

Turning the fragments over with tweezers while wearing white gloves in a cleanroom, I examine the other side. The weight of this artist’s line is much thinner, and the colors more subdued. The adjacent fragments fit together to form an almost complete image. Two men sit together, their words (like those of the old man on the obverse) written out in black-bordered circles which trail off into short lines that indicate which man is speaking. The only full figure on either side is of a large man in a gray-and-black striped garment, leaning back in a green chair with his rather large feet up on a kettle hanging from a hook jutting from a gray brick wall. This, and the large brown jug behind him, suggests a non-urban setting, although this is, of course, only a layman’s wild guess.

The other figure, a much shorter man, is seen in profile. This figure is not complete, but the head is clearly visible, as is his right arm, which seems to be resting on his knee. He appears to be wearing orange suspenders over a black shirt, or perhaps orange overalls. His profile clearly displays an outlandishly large, round nose with a few scraggly whiskers beneath it.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this specimen is the fact that each man’s dialogue is complete.

The large man seems a bit long-winded, as he goes on for quite a while:

“What’s this country coming to, Snuffy?? Is it right — sending an innocent man to prison for 20 years for picking a few flowers??? Of course — the governor was down on me — the cad!! I’d like to have seen the expression on his face when they told him I escaped — haw — haw –”

The other man, presumably “Snuffy,” replies in a rather strange manner. This may be some sort of dialect, or merely the result of the corncob pipe stuck in his mouth:

“I swow, Brother Ambrose — hit’s downright shameful –”

Clearly, there is a lot to be learned about the culture that produced these artifacts. I have reason to suspect that it was a monarchy, for printed on one of the fragments in a very small typeface is the phrase “Copr 1938 King Feature”. Regrettably, nothing in these codices gives me the slightest hint as to how to further my research into this mystery. This keeps me awake at night, tortured by my own ignorance, until I am forced to wash down a fistful of Restoril with a swig of Balvenie, and fall into a deep and mindless slumber.

Night of the Lepus

From another century (1995):

One Angry Rabbit

I find myself in this situation every year without fail. It’s another Saturday night during the San Diego Comic Convention. I’ve spent an entire day, perhaps two, wandering through the detritus of popular culture, surrounded by hordes of adolescent boys and men older than myself who haven’t quite managed to outgrow their childhood enthusiasms. This bewildering confrontation with my ancient past always leaves me reeling and slightly disgusted, wandering the streets of the Gaslamp Quarter wondering if there’s anything to do beyond watching the annual convention masquerade and its inevitable contingent of overweight Trekkies stretching the elastic of their homemade Starfleet drag. This year I found a seemingly viable alternative: Destroy All Monsters was scheduled to play at Bodies at the stroke of midnight.

By all accounts, the reunion tour of this quasi-legendary Michigan quartet was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Obscure even in their heyday, the members of Destroy All Monsters spent the past two decades moving on to bigger and better things: drummer Mike Kelley and guitarist Jim Shaw are both popular artists in L.A., Shaw being best known for his “Thrift Store Paintings” exhibition, Kelley for his cover art for Sonic Youth’s Dirty album. Vocalist Niagara is a rising underground art star in her own right, but her paintings have yet to command the prices attached to the work of her better established bandmates. When DAM decided to break their twenty year silence and subject the masses to their raucous melange of feedback and bad attitude, Niagara’s exhibit at the Rita Dean Gallery assured San Diego a spot on their itinerary.

Several hours before the concert, I found myself relaxing at the gallery, Niagara’s Warhol-inspired femmes fatales gazing down at me with deadly intensity. While I had never heard a single note performed by DAM, my co-worker Rod was awash in anticipation. “I can’t believe this,” he told me. “I grew up in Detroit, but I’m finally going to see Destroy All Monsters—in San Diego.”

“Yeah,” chimed in a fortyish white guy with graying Afro-styled hair. “I drove all the way down from San Francisco to see them. I’ve been looking forward to this for twenty years.”

Some people are just destined for disappointment.

When we sauntered into Bodies at 11:55, the band was already setting up. Unfortunately for the diehard DAM fans in attendance, the band in question was a local foursome which proceeded to play a forty-five minute set of driving rock that left most of the small crowd restless and apathetic. By the time the openers were finished, the news had already spread through the bar: Destroy All Monsters, furious at the delay, had decided to cancel their performance. While the merely curious nursed their beers in bemused silence, a handful of Michiganites, including Rod, formed an ad hoc committee to dissuade them from canceling. (James O’Barr, noted Detroit resident and creator of the popular comic book/movie character The Crow, was content to hang back in the bar and fulminate about San Diego’s unspeakable inferiority to his usual stomping ground.) A little hometown adulation seemed to do the trick. The band began to set up their equipment, and everyone, including the disgruntled O’Barr, settled down to watch their idols storm the stage.

Around 12:15, Mike Kelley took his seat behind the drum kit and proceeded to test it with a series of complicated exercises in 1/1 time while a demure woman in a silver lamé jump suit revved up a tape of prerecorded synthesizer drones and drum tracks. Satisfied that his kit was secure, Kelley slinked off stage; the woman, left to her own devices, picked up a large styrofoam halo that wouldn’t have passed muster in a Sun Ra stage show, placed in on her head, and turned to face the audience. The dismal truth rippled through the crowd: this wasn’t Destroy All Monsters at all, but another opening act. Oblivious to this wave of disappointment, the woman spread her arms and intoned a cosmic paean to misery while an overhead projector beamed images of young girls and rabbits onto the wall above her head. This accomplished, she removed her halo, placed it carefully on a mike stand, picked up an electric guitar and began to strum crisp, if basic, chords over her prefab backup. The images behind her took a decidedly theriomorphic turn: girls merging with rabbits, growing ears, and sprouting buck teeth. The focus of her lyrics, beyond a general angst-ridden anomie, remained unclear until a few songs had come and gone. “I am not a bunny,” she suddenly announced — “I’m a grown up girl!“

“I get it,” Rod whispered. “It’s a rock opera.”

Strumming harder to underscore the intensity of this all-too-common tale of confused species identity, she repeated the couplet over and over like a mantra. “I am NOT a bunny— I’m a grown up girl! I am NOT a bunny— I’m a grown up girl!” Even her voice— which up to this point had almost driven me to rummage around in my pockets for a copy of the Benjamin Proverb Test or some other handy litmus for schizophrenia— began to take on an emotional depth which nearly rivaled the range of the late chanteuse Nico. This, obviously, was a crucial point in the psychodrama unfolding before us. “I am NOT a bunny— I’m a grown up girl! “

After a few minutes of this, my attention began to wander. I noticed a quartet of East County cowboys, apparently displaced by Buffalo Joe’s closure for remodeling, standing in the back of the bar pondering the spectacle before them. “Hang on to your chair,” muttered Rod. “You might need it— they look like they’re ready to bust up the place. Just remember: in a bar fight, always hit the guy in the Stetson first.” I strained to hear what they were saying, but all I could catch was “I want to smoke some of what she’s on,” followed by “Let’s just get ourselves a beer before—” The rest of their conversation was drowned out by a smattering of laughter and applause as the not-a-bunny girl segued into her next number by donning a pair of rabbit ears and oversized false teeth. I began to panic. Maybe Rod was right. Perhaps the rest of the sentence I’d overheard ended with the words “and stomp on some of these freaks.” On the other hand, they didn’t look much like the sorts who would risk getting any blood on their well-pressed, pastel-accented Western shirts and designer denims. Just to be on the safe side, I held on to my beer bottle when the waitress tried to carry it away.

Back on stage, the bunny-girl wrestled with her personal demons in an odd but affecting interpretive dance, rotating slowly as she hopped up and down, holding her hands before her in a limp, supplicative position that eloquently expressed her struggle to suppress the deadly rodent within her. Then, catharsis achieved, she cast away her rabbit drag, picked up her guitar and headed into her finale: “Must be happy— must have an a-part-ment!”

Obviously, a very angry rabbit still lurked behind our heroine’s uneasy compromise with the norms of society.

As she ambled off stage to an appreciative ovation, I checked my watch and shook my head in disbelief. It was 1:45… fifteen minutes to closing time. This was lost on the bearded gentleman who stepped onto the stage and lit two dozen large sticks of incense before strapping on an electric bass. Jim Shaw proceeded to unleash a torrent of squealing guitar noise, echoed by the bassist and a thrashing Mike Kelley, who had subtly reappeared behind his drum kit. This gleeful cacaphony thundered on for all of two minutes until Niagara, clad in a green velvet bathrobe, fright wig and sunglasses, took her place at the forefront of the band. “My stomach looks great tonight,” she proclaimed, apropos of nothing. As Destroy All Monsters headed into their first song of the evening, Niagara lurched towards her microphone stand as if it had suddenly moved away from her. (It hadn’t.) Unsteady on her feet, she mumbled obscure, inaudible lyrics as the band forged ahead in its own oblivious fashion. It was unclear where one song ended and the next picked up, although when Niagara removed her bathrobe to reveal a black lace top and black Spandex cycling shorts, it was obviously meant to signal something. If only she could have told us what, exactly, she was trying to convey… but that moment never came. Instead, a member of the Bodie’s staff approached the stage and, with a few whispered words, brought the show to a shuddering anticlimax.

“We’re going to have to stop now,” announced Niagara as she stumbled off the stage and out of the bar. A look of barely contained rage crossed Mike Kelley’s face, prompting him to resume his single-beat warm-up drill with greater speed than before: Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The guitarists threw in with a renewed squall of feedback punctuated with a few well chosen curses before tossing down their instruments in disgust: how dare they close the bar now, just when they were getting started? The audience, unimpressed by the sight of four middle aged men struggling to cover their lack of professionalism with a poor display of punk attitude, drifted outside and into the street, where Niagara, swaying in the night breeze, offered vague apologies for subjecting us to “such great music.” As I stepped out the door, I turned and glanced back at the stage. The incense was still burning, shrouding the bar in a miasma of futility. Kelley continued to pound away, adamant in his refusal to acknowledge any schedule but his own. The echo of this simple, angry beat followed me down F Street until its steady rhythm merged with all the other meaningless noise of the city.

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Copyright © 1995 by Dan Whitworth. All rights reserved. A version of this article appeared in the San Diego Reader in 1995.

Gun, With Occasional Music

Gun, With Occasional Music
by Jonathan Lethem
Harcourt Brace, 1994
262 pages, hardback ($19.95)

The future Conrad Metcalf lives in doesn’t have much going for it in the utopia department. Sure, the drugs are free— the government likes to keep the people in line. Most of the people don’t mind as long as there’s a snort or two of their favorite blend at hand… Forgettol, Acceptol, Regrettol— take your pick. Asking questions, even in casual conversation, is illegal unless you’ve got a license like Metcalf. He’s a Private Inquisitor. He’s also one of the last decent men around— a fact he hides behind a suitably tough demeanor. He doesn’t have to clear an innocent man of murder, but he tries anyway. The next thing he knows, he’s got a gun-toting kangaroo on his trail. Go figure. Evolution therapy’s to blame. It turned all the children into babyheads, cynical brats who spend all their time in bars drinking, smoking cigarettes and talking in gibberish only their overevolved peers can understand. Evolved animals soon took the place of children, but this didn’t work out as planned, either. Metcalf takes it all in stride, but he’s got more than a criminal marsupial to contend with: the official Inquisitor’s Office wants him off the case, and is willing to use any means to stop him, threatening his license and shaving points off his karma card like nobody’s business. And of course, there’s Celeste… no noir thriller would be complete without the wrong woman in the picture somewhere. Jonathan Lethem’s first novel is a classy science fiction mystery that bristles with wit and imagination, turning both genres on their heads and inside out before Metcalf overcomes all odds and sorts out the unguessable solution to his case.

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Text copyright © 1994 by Dan Whitworth. All rights reserved. Originally published in Axcess Magazine.

Dead Is As Dead Does

"Quentin me boyo, for the love of Jayzus, save a bullet for me..."

By the time he reaches his fifty-fifth birthday, cinema wunderkind Quentin Tarantino will have eased into his rightful slot as the latest avatar of Saint Spielberg, a position rife with many temptations — chief of them being an overwhelming need to create “serious” films to offset the horrible burden of his immense popularity. To this end, he will write, produce and direct his own adaptation of James Joyce’s classic short story “The Dead.” As always, mental impressions received from the future are blurry, but I do have a clear image of Mr. Tarantino’s final scene as Gabriel. (Yes, he will be playing the lead, after rejecting Gabriel Byrne, Shane McGowan, and Aidan Quinn as “not Irish enough.”) The scene has been updated from the 1900s to a vaguely contemporary period where no music created after 1980 is ever heard, except for that certain unavoidable Pogues tune on the soundtrack to evoke the properly world-weary New Year’s sentiment.

A bittersweet tale, “The Dead” ended with the revelation, on January 6th, that Gabriel’s wife loved someone before him , and with his realization that she can never love him with the fire of that first love. In the Tarantino version, Gabriel left Ireland on September 7th and eventually wound up in Los Angeles, where he arranges drug deals to raise money for a fanatical splinter group of the IRA. As his latest caper begins to go seriously wrong and his associates begin to die off one by one, Gabriel recounts pieces of his sad past to the only friend he can trust (or so he thinks)— crooked L.A. narc Mikey, whose name, with heavy irony, echoes that of Michael Furey, his wife’s first love. As the final Joycean flashback fades, Gabriel (Tarantino) and Mikey (Steve Buscemi) prepare to face the film’s astoundingly complicated denouement, but not before Gabriel, wistfully aware of his impending demise, attempts to explain how he felt on that sad wintry day so long ago. He’s just learned that Mikey has betrayed him, but must pass his tale along to someone, and extends this final trust to his Judas. A moving moment in the hands of a great actor— but no, it’s Tarantino talking. (Read the following paragraph out loud, very fast, for maximum effect.)

“Hell, I admit it, Mikey. I cried. It was like, the dead have a hold on the living that the living can’t compete with. Ya follow me, motherfucker? Just like I’m gonna haunt you if I don’t take you with me. And when I realized this, you know what I did? Nuthin’— I just stared out the fuckin’ window. Stared out the fuckin’ window at the snow. And I realized… I knew… that it was snowin’ everywhere, not just in Ireland but everywhere. It was snowing on Furey’s grave, on the crosses and shit, but it was everywhere. It was like… like I could hear it in my soul… snow… falling faintly, yeah, fallin’ really fucking faintly through the fuckin’ universe, faintly fallin’ but so fuckin’ loud I could hear it, you treacherous fuck! I almost passed out at the thought of all that fucking snow… it was everywhere, like death, no escapin’ it, it falls on everybody. Snow, death, death, snow— same fuckin’ thing, really. That’s why I came out here… to get away from all that fuckin’ snow.”

Our master thespian pauses here to cough up a discreet rivulet of blood as police loudspeakers announce that the building is surrounded.

“But it looks like we’re caught in the middle of a fuckin’ blizzard after all, Mikey. Ready to face the music?”

Mikey, moved that Gabriel has entrusted him with the knowledge of his innermost pain, nods silently, having been shot in the larynx during the second reel. He’s back on Gabriel’s side, this time for real. They storm out of their hideout, guns blazing. Fifty minutes later, after suffering countless flesh wounds, Gabriel and Mikey stand bloody and alive, surrounded by the corpses of the entire LAPD. Inspired by John Woo (who left the theater halfway through this sequence to go back to his hotel room and ingest a fatal does of household cleansers), this poignant homage also evokes the eerie battle sequence from Kurosawa’s Ran. The two men stare at each other in a brilliant smog-reddened Los Angeles sunset, their male bonding now complete. Suddenly a shot rings out, and Mikey— his keen reflexes undiminished by his many injuries— falls to the ground, dead*, prompting Gabriel to let out an inarticulate howl of agony and rage. (Harvey Keitel spent years coaching Tarantino for this moment, but it doesn’t quite come off as planned.) Pulling himself together, Gabriel sees his estranged wife (Uma Thurman) up the street, tossing aside her high-powered sniper rifle. Having realized that she loves Gabriel best, she’s just achieved closure by killing her childhood sweetheart’s namesake. As Foreigner’s “Feels Like The First Time” swells on the soundtrack (Tarantino ran out of good ’70s music years ago), they race towards each other, and meet in the middle of the street— only to be run over, in their moment of blissful reconciliation, by a really big truck.

* For Michael O’Donoghue, a man who wrote good. A good joke is worth stealing.

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Originally published in Axcess Magazine, 1994. © 1994 Dan Whitworth

On Being Unable to Sit Through Frank Miller’s Execrable Spirit Movie

The real Spirit in action... as drawn by the real Will Eisner

Seriously, Miller– if you were such good pals with the late Will Eisner, why did you get it so goddam wrong? Eisner’s style combined bravura graphics with tongue-in-cheek humor (often literally, when Denny Colt was particularly bemused) and sly innuendo. There was nothing sly about your misadaptation of this classic series. In place of bravura, you gave us bombast… kind of like being smashed over the head by Samuel Jackson with a giant wrench.  Your Denny Colt had no sense of humor whatsoever, the plot competely forsook the gemlike quality of Eisner’s self-contained eight-page stories, and most of the female characters came across like porn fantasies rather than Eisner’s elegant femmes fatales. (I will admit that I developed a slight crush on the movie’s Ellen Dolan, but that’s beside the point.) Your decision to make The Octopus an on-screen character instead of a brilliant criminal mastermind who was never seen, save for his gloves, reveals a profound lack of narrative confidence.  I won’t even touch on one of the most embarrassing performances of Samuel L. Jackson’s career. And for crying out loud– the suit and mask are blue. Please stop making movies, ‘kay? Thanks.

Exclusive Interview with Ed Brubaker!

At last year’s Comic Con I went hoping to see an old acquaintance, Ed Brubaker, who has become one of the top (and best) comic book writers in the industry. I texted a mutual friend, Carole, to ask if she had anything for me to say to Ed. She texted back, “You suck!”

“I’m not going to tell Ed that he sucks!”

“C’mon. He’ll get it.”

“You sure? Okay, I’ll SHOW him the text.”

And so I did, right before his first big solo panel. Bad timing. He turned away and said, “Whatever!” Great, I thought. Ed now thinks I’m an ass.

Cut to last week. I called Carole, who was vacationing in Seattle, and heard a dog barking in the background.

DW: What’s with the dogs?

C: They’re Ed Brubaker’s dogs.

DW: What, you kidnapped Ed’s dogs?

C: I’m visiting Ed and his wife.

DW: Cool, how’s he doing? Guess he’s not mad about that thing at the Comic Con.

Ed (in background): You suck!

DW: Only because I listened to Carole.

C: [To Ed: He says it's because he listened to me.] (Background laughter) Here, I’ll put Ed on.

Ed: Hi, Dan

DW: Hi Ed. I just made my monthly contribution to your retirement fund.

Ed: What did you get?

DW: Captain America and Daredevil.

Ed: I’m almost done with Daredevil. I’m only doing it to issue 500.

DW: What? No! Who’s going to take it–

Carole: Sorry, I have to take my phone back. It’s running low and I’m expecting a call from my traveling companion.

DW: Uh, okay… ‘bye.

+ + + + + + + + +

So there you have it, the latest scoop on Brubaker’s Daredevil run. Highly recommended: Ed’s series Criminal. Start with the first paperback collection, Coward. It’s a classic noir flick just waiting to be made. (Christ, just don’t let Frank Miller or Zack Snyder direct it.)

Post the First: Statement of Principle

“For in this garden,” said the Centaur, “each man that ever lived has sojourned for a little while, with no company save his illusions. I must tell you again that in this garden are encountered none but imaginary creatures. And stalwart persons take their hour of recreation here, and go hence unaccompanied, to become aldermen and respected merchants and bishops, and to be admired as captains upon prancing horses, or even as kings upon tall thrones; each in his station thinking not at all of the garden ever any more. But now and then come timid persons, Jurgen, who fear to leave this garden without an escort: so these must need go hence with one or another imaginary creature, to guide them about alleys and by-paths, because imaginary creatures find little nourishment in the public highways, and shun them. Thus must these timid persons skulk about obscurely with their diffident and skittish guides, and they do not ever venture willingly into the thronged places where men get horses and build thrones.”

“And what becomes of these timid persons, Centaur?”

“Why, sometimes they spoil paper, Jurgen, and sometimes they spoil human lives.”

“Then are these accursed persons,” Jurgen considered.

“You should know best,” replied the Centaur.

– James Branch Cabell, Jurgen, 1919