First of all, good luck with the New Deal — (actually, I haven’t hit 411 since you guys split) — hope it works out for you and your truculent ass.
Secondly, I’m here to Drop Science on the subject of one Mr. Tony Altamore. He was, for years, a member of the tag team, The Sicilians,
along with his partner, the soon to be Fearless Captain, Lou Albano! Don’t believe me? Then, check this —-
http://www.prowrestlinghistory.com/supercards/usa/misc/chicago.html
— and then Bite me, you miserable Bumberclot, you!!!
All the Best,
ew
Umm, yeah, I don’t really care. I’m sure he was aces back in the day.
Bumberclot? Bumberclot? HA! I love it!
you’re the kind of guy who won’t suck a dick. you’ll just hold it in your mouth until the swelling goes down.
Verbfiend
Mom?
And hello bumberclots! I’m Chris and this is the Midnight News Alpha… this week we go light on the wrestling news and heavy on everything else because you NEED diversity in your lives, you NEED a change of pace, you NEED to experience a RAINBOW of different topics and ideas! Yes, there CAN be a wrestling column that isn’t filled with in-depth proof that Triple H is on an on-going mission to kill the business from within and I’M HERE TO PROVE IT!!!
So off we go!
BUT, PLUGS
I didn’t show up a week ago, but I did slam down Midnight News Omega on Thursday, Lot of people enjoyed it. Flea personally endorses the whole “track the Smackdown Spoilers” thing I’ve been doing (says Flea, “Ayup, it’s the nuts, Hi-Rate. Hyuck!“). I also lecture Mssrs Meltzer, Keller, and Scherer on why they suck and point out specific reasons. I DEFEND Scott Keith (more of a lesser of two evils thing), I give advice, I give an update on this site and how everyone is feeling, and Vince McMahon Himself contributed! All that and more! MORE!!
But, of course, the big plug for the week is… who won the Inside Pulse One Thousand Dollars Sweepstakes!
That’s right, one of you lucky c-suckers is one thousand dollars richer. You all registered in the forums, you all eagerly awaited the questions, you all answered, and you all bitched at Widro and Scooter for making their questions too vague (MY question was, of course, perfect)… now is the time. The time is now.
Which one of you assholes won a grand? $1’000 American? Who will get to go nuts at their nearest Comic shop? Who will go ballistic at their nearest DDR game? Who plans on taking their grand and doing nothing but dance, dance, DANCE???
And the winner is…. the winner of the Inside Pulse $1000 Sweepstakes… the winner of a REAL contest with a REAL prize… something NONE of these IWC F*ckwits could have possibly IMAGINED… is….
Oh wait… first, the ANSWERS!
1: Who did Booker T beat for the US Title in his previous title reign, and who did he drop the title to?
Booker T won the title from Rick Steiner, and then actually handed it to Chris Kanyon.
2: Edge’s long-time tag team partner Christian made his WWE debut in 1998. He also made history in his very first match. What did he accomplish, who did he beat, and what was the event?
Christian debuted at Judgment Day 98, beating Taka for the WWF Light-Heavyweight Title
3: Kurt Angle has won his share of championships in his 5-year career. How many title reigns has Angle had? Count EVERY championship belt (including World Titles, IC, Tag, etc.) do NOT count King of the Ring and Royal Rumble wins.
10 – WWE (4), World (1), US (1), Intercontinental (1), Euro (1), WWE Tag (1), Hardcore (1)
4: SummerSlam 94 saw Undertaker take on an Underfaker, who was the Underfaker, and what other roles has he played in wrestling? Name two. His real name is acceptable as one.
Brian Lee, Bulldozer Brian Lee, Chainz,
5: How many WWE Pay-Per-Views have taken place outside of the United States? Do not count non-domestic PPVs such as Insurrextion, Rebellion, etc.
TWELVE
1. Wrestlemania VI Toronto, Canada
2. Summerslam ’92 London, England
3. IYH #4 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
4. IYH #9 Vancouver, BC, Canada
5. IYH #16 Calgary, Alberta, Canada
6. Survivor Series ’97 Montreal, Quebec, Canada
7. Break Down: IYH Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
8. Rock Bottom Vancouver, BC, Canada
9. Wrestlemania X-8 Toronto, Canada
10. No Way Out ’03 Montral, Quebec, Canada
11. Backlash ’04 Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
12. Summerslam ’04 Toronto, Ontario, Canada
6: Randy Orton is now the youngest World Heavyweight Champion in history. Who is the oldest in WWF/WWE history and how old? Think very carefully on this one.
Vince McMahon at 54
7: However, he’s not the youngest WORLD champion in general, as two people were younger than him when they won the NWA World title. Who were they?.
Kerry Von Erich and Lou Thesz
8: In 1980, long-time babyface/hero/rolemodel LARRY ZBYSZKO shocked, and I mean SHOCKED the W(orld)W(ide)W(restling)F(ederation) by turning Heel and SPITTING on the legacy of his mentor/friend, Bruno Sammartino! It was a DISGUSTING turn that ROCKED the fans to their very core! Yet, Larry wasn’t through pissing on the fans! His heel turn was so shocking that his longtime friend/tag partner had returned from a “European tour” (ie: injury,rehab, jail, whatever…) to get in his face and say, “What is your PROBLEM, dude?” Well, Larry slapped him upside his head and kicked him around a little. Bruno came to the rescue, Larry split, Bruno helped the man up, asked if he was okay. The man grabbed the microphone and yelled, “DO ME ONE FAVOR!! TONIGHT, BREAK EVERY DAMN BONE IN HIS BODY!!!!” Within a few scant weeks, Larry Zbyszko broke Bruno’s heart, the heart of the fans, and with the finality of the last nail in the coffin, the heart of the one guy who thought this was just a huge mistake and wanted to see for himself. So who was he? Who demanded that Bruno break every damn bone in Zbyszko’s body? Who cemented Zbyszko as the most hated man in wrestling in 1980?
Tony Garea
And the winner…. the man who is ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS richer because Inside Pulse KNOWS HOW TO TREAT OUR READERS IS….
ME!!!!! HYATTE WON!!!! HYATTE SCORED ALL THE ANSWERS!!!!!!!!!!!! WHOO HOOOOOOOOOOO WHOOOO HOOOOOOOOOO
Where did it say Pulse writers, even ones who supplied one of the questions, couldn’t play?
Oh, just funning… on the Pulse forum he’s goes by the creative handle Texasjim316, but in the real world, nestled deep in the heart of Fort Worth, Texas, he lives his life by his God Given name… Jim Reynolds.
That’s right… JIM REYNOLDS is now ONE THOUSAND BUCKS RICHER!!! CONGRATULATIONS, JIM, YOU MAGNIFICENT SCUMBAG, YOU!!!
Jim has until Wednesday at midnight to email Widro@4sternstaging.com from the same email address as registered on the forum with his/her name, address and daytime phone number. I suggest you RUN, Jimbo… because we WILL hand it to the guy who came in second if we don’t hear from you!
HEY, WHERE DA WHITE PEOPLE AT??
I was going to do a little MTV VMAs thing but… umm…. are there any white people in music anymore?
And apparently, Will Smith personally brokered the deal to get Shaq out of L.A. and into Miami.
You gotta love how MTV’s newest policy is to stick all the rock bands in one, “Battle of the Bands-like” segment and then be done with them. Two years in a row they pulled that trick… NO, THREE!!
The FUCK was John Mellencamp doing there?
The FUCK was Bruce Willis doing hanging out with P Diddy’s crew?
Is MTV still calling TRL “Hosted by Carson Daly”, like they have for the last 2 years AFTER he bailed… or did they finally admit that he was gone?
Alicia Keys needs a titty-tuck… but she did a damn fine impression of Lauren Hill.
And when D12 came out with members of Good Charlotte, I thought it was Eminem in costume…. and I thought Em got reall FAT…
Luckily, one of my youthful and FEMALE readers, 18 year old Jamie, set me straight:
Hyatte1com: Jamie
kiTteNpaNtiEs: yes
Hyatte1com: did you watch the VMAs?
kiTteNpaNtiEs: i am watching them now
Hyatte1com: Did you see D12 and Good Charlotte come out yet?
kiTteNpaNtiEs: yes
Hyatte1com: was that Slim Shady dressed as a Good Charlotte dude?
kiTteNpaNtiEs: no u idiot
kiTteNpaNtiEs: it was joel and benji
Hyatte1com: cuz I was gonna say Slim Shady got FAT, yo
kiTteNpaNtiEs: yea thats benji. how can you be so stupid
I have offically out-grown MTV…. Hyatte is OLLLD, jack!
THE EDGE OF AGONY… BUT MAN, THESE NACHOS ARE TASTY
In Salt Lake City, Edge too a bad fall out of the ring and torqued up his hip something FIERCE… this was just a couple of minutes into his match with Chris Jericho and the thing had to be stopped. He was helped to the back… and I mean he was practically CARRIED out.
But, lo and behold, to make up for the total lack of Smackdown spoilers… the TORCH was able to score this EXCLUSIVE addendum…
After the show, we went to Applebees. La Resistance was there when we got there and after a few minutes, several of the others came in as well, including Randy Orton, Rhino, Coach, Jericho and Maven. Christian and Edge then showed up. Christian was practically carrying Edge into the establishment, got him into a chair and it took several minutes for Edge to get himself settled in his seat…. he was in VERY OBVIOUS pain.
When I went over to say hello and congratulate on a great show, Edge was in so much pain, he couldn’t even look up. Coach was sitting with Edge and Christian and I asked him if Edge was going to be ok, he said “we really hope so, it’s not looking good right now.”
Several other fans approached Edge, he couldn’t even pick his head up to talk to anyone. He should have been in bed with ice and pain meds, or at the hospital, in my opinion. After a few minutes, Christian asked the fans to please leave him alone.
Wow… even in tremendous pain, Edge simply could not stay away from Applebees and its Veggie Patch Pizza. He ignored the shooting spasms just for this ultra-thin pizza topped with mushrooms, creamy spinach, artichoke hearts, fresh tomatoes, and the perfect blend of Italian cheeses and herbs! Indeed, Edge may have left the restaurant blinded by the pain, but godDAM that sumbitch also left feeling satisfied without feeling stuffed!
Nice to see Christian has returned also! Even if he still had a little backpain, that wasn’t going to keep him away from Applebees and their Honey Grilled Salmon! When Christian digs into the fabulous flame-grilled Atlantic salmon glazed with Applebee’s Honey Pepper Sauce, and takes full advantage of the side dishes of almond rice pilaf, seasonal vegetables and garlic toast. He won’t need Tyson Tomko to solve his HUNGER problem!! Very Tasty!
And guilty as he may have been over crippling his friend, Chris Jericho would have REALLY felt bad if he missed out on sinking his teeth into Applebees’
Crispy Orange Skillet!! The first Undisputed champ will DEFINITELY tap out to this perfect mixture of Eastern spices coupled with a warm orange glaze that leaves their breaded boneless chicken tasting sweet, spicy and oh so satisfying. Y2J always does some vicious Lion Tamers when it comes to the side dishes: a flavorful array of stir-fry vegetables and almond rice pilaf that accompany their newest Skillet Sensations!
As for the new champ, Randy Orton? Well, he kills off the depression he has over Triple H’s evil machinations by chowing down on Applebees spectacular Cowboy Burger! Yes indeed!, Young Orton slips his cowboy hat back on and says howdy to a bold burger topped with onion peels, Applebee’s Signature Barbecue Sauce, Jack and cheddar cheeses, and bacon. High protein, high crabs, high fat, high DELICIOUS!! YEE HAW!!
Anyway… Edge is hurt, but his stomach is in HEAVEN!!
I personally got a kick out of this segment.
ALLAH PRAISES THE POPCORN MATCHES
Word on the street is that we got us a brand new Nation of Domination-like gang coming our way to Smackdown, and that rascal GM Teddy Long will be recruiting only the MEANEST black guys to take the dang show OVER!
So I guess Rodney mack and Mark Henry are a lock. Booker T can be the showpiece. Orlando Jones can leave his Massa JBL. Jazz… well, jazz will probably stay at Raw because that’s where the chick wrestlers are. Umm… who else? D-Von? Naaah. Maven? Sure, why not.
The big question is, who gets to fill the “awkwardly token white boy” role previously held by Owen Hart?
Heh… I, for one, would LOVE to hear Hardcore Holly try to say: Assallamu aleykum without his head exploding. OH, that would be a hoot!
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE FUTURE EX MRS TRISH HYATTE
Ohhhh I know I promised last Thursday… but this will take a lot of explaining… and time is running short for me… and the damn column is already jammed packed with stuff. So this gets postponed a week or so.
Shut up and quit whining.
Here, instead of that, I’ll give you this:
LATINO EATING (AWAY AT HIM)
WWE management is getting very, VERY worried over Eddie Guererro. It seems that he is CRUMBLING over the stress of not carrying the Smackdown brand as champion, even though WWE keeps telling him that no one is blaming him for this. He also, apparently, lost a lot of money with… umm… bad investments I guess (that covers all the bases nicely), is starting to feel his 37 years, and… well, no one will come out and say it but the feel-good comeback from the narcotic story of the year may not exactly be 100% truth. (Read between the lines… then snort the lines. Get the gist? Need a roadmap? FIGURE IT OUT!!)
Does Eddie realize that the REAL damage he does to the company will be if they are forced to release him until he straightens his ass out… again?
Here’s some Guide to Life for Eddie, because I know EXACTLY what will raise his spirits and turn that frown upside down…
Feeling blue, Eddie? Feeling guilty? Feeling responsible? Well then I suggest you DROPKICK thosre troubles away with Applebee’s Bourbon Street Steak! You may be Hell but you can FEEL like you’re in New Orleans by chowing on this succulent 10 oz. sirloin! Get a REAL high from this slice of beef jazzed up with Cajun spices and served with saute’d onions, mushrooms, country potatoes and garlic toast.
Then Eddie, just say no to drugs and say YES to Applebees’ White Chocolate and Walnut Blondie! You may have never met Andre the Giant, but you can still say hello to the eighth wonder of the world! Oh Ese, your blondie is baked with pecans and topped with a scoop of ice cream and chopped walnuts. ANd just for Latino heat, this mouth wattering piece of legal sin is served warm and covered at your table with a rich, sizzling maple butter sauce. And you thought the Pyramids were breathtaking!
Live a little, Eddie! We all love you!
THE INSIDE PULSE BOOK-OF-THE-TWO-WEEK-CLUB
Flea: Only three writers in the world have ever meant anything, DeHy-Dr8
Hyatte: Oh yeah, which ones?
Flea: Stephen King, George Orwell…
Hyatte: And?
Flea: (takes a long, drawn-out, desperate pull from his bong ‘ followed by a nice, generous sip from his glass) and… whoever.
Hyatte: Whoever?
Flea: Yep
Hyatte: Who the f*ck is whoever?
Flea: When you know, then you’ll know
********************
Yeah, that’s right. I just wedged this thing smack dab in the middle of the column! DEAL WITH IT, TUBBO!!!
Anyway, let’s talk about horror…
Of course, in the book world, the genre of “horror” begins and ends with a certain down to earth, unassuming writer in Maine.
Yeah, admit it, Stephen King is the only horror writer most of you have ever read. He has DOMINATED this little corner of the book world for thirty years now.
And he’s good at it! So good that even his upper-crust “literature” peers have finally started to grudgingly admit that he’s good at what he does.
But King isn’t the only guy who does Horror books. There’s Dean Koontz. But Koontz really sucks, no, really… I gave the guy a try on a few books and they always fizzled out on me at the end. The REAL horror story is the one Koontz will never tell: it’s the one about a bald writer with a mustache who suddenly showed up with a full head of glorious hair and no mustache, AND NO ONE COMMENTED ON IT!
There’s Poppy Z Brite, but she has a cult following for a reason.
There’s Ann Rice, but after Tom Cruise showed exactly how fruity Lestat was, her whole franchise ran out of steam.
And there’s Peter Straub, who is the subject of this installment of the Two-Week club.
Now obviously, I opened this segment with Stephen King because many of you probably only know Peter Straub as the guy who wrote The Talisman and The Black House with King. And, if you are anything like me, you thought both books were… un-King-like. Not necessarily bad but, well, when Stephen King’s name is on the cover we expect a Stephen King book! Straub is a different sort of writer.
I liked Black House better than The Talisman because of the narration. They told the story through the eyes of a crow that worked for the Crimson King or some such bad guy from King’s “Dark Tower” series (of which I will attack and devour the moment all the books are out). I didn’t even really care for The Talisman because of how thick the plot was. It was all very busy, so much so that if your mind drifted for so much as a half page, you would be lost in the story. I came away from The Talisman still loving SK, but not too impressed with Peter Straub.
Years passed, and I find myself in a bookstore and looking for a new author to try. Feeling frisky, I ventured over to the horror section. I’m older, wiser, with a stronger mind. Let’s see if someone can do horror like the guy from Maine.
So I decided to give Peter Straub a second chance. The guy is successful, his peers love him, and critics are generally kind – maybe he writes for an older audience, maybe he writes horror for smart people! So I grabbed Floating Dragon.
Floating Dragon tells a multi-character tale about an odorless, colorless “Thinking Cloud” – called “DRG” – that is let loose from where it was created and eventually settles in on a sleepy little Connecticut town called Hampstead. Not only does the cloud end up dissolving people into liquid, but it also creates mad, living hallucinations that are every bit as real as the people experiencing them. Nightmares start coming to life in this little suburb; ghosts from the town’s history are riled and given shape; and Straub takes his sweet time in unrolling the epidemic.
And Straub is every bit as dense as he was in the 80’s. Not dense as in dumb, Straub is a smart writer, but dense as in he has all these characters doing all these things and they all are effected by the cloud and by the illusions and all the characters take the scenic route (the book is 5 pages shy of 600, folks) getting to the big blow-out at the end. Some of them don’t make it, obviously. What would a horror story be without some death?
The story is told from a number of perspectives, no one main character gets most of the air-time here. Straub does give us a main narrator, an elderly writer named Graham, who gets to tell the story through a first person perspective (we eventually learn that all the other perspetives are actually Graham’s, being told through diary journals and interviews). The style isn’t confusing, its just frustrating. The book isn’t bad, its just… busy. It’s because when you have a LOT of characters in a story, NONE of them can just be sitting quietly doing nothing until the author decides to get back to them. They have to had been living their lives while the story moved to another character (or two, or eighteen), so it’s up to the author to devote a lot of words catching us up to what the character has been up to while we were reading about another character, THEN bringing him or her to the here and now and furthering the story. That’s what I mean by dense.
But is it scary? I don’t know. The only SK book that really frightened the piss out of me and made me freak over those little sounds we sometimes hear in our basements in the dead of night was The Shining, most stuff on written text doesn’t frighten me, the best it can do is make me eager to turn the page. That isn’t the fault of the author, it’s just me. If you are easily frightened by horror books, Straub probably has a few hallucinations in here to satisfy you, if you can get through the book.
I couldn’t. I had to quit somewhere into the 400’s. It just had too many characters dealing with too many nightmares told in too slow a pace.
But that doesn’t mean YOU might not like it. So I’ll give you an excerpt and you can see for yourself what a King-less Peter Straub is like.
In this excerpt from Floating Dragon, Richard Allbee, one of the main protagonists is walking to work. He is a former child actor who was on a hit series (and subsequently haunted by the actor who played his older brother on the show), but had left show-business and became a successful architect. While he was away on a job, his wife, Laura was murdered in a rather grisly fashion. As he is doing whatever he can to keep his sanity intact, the DRG continues its attack. Not only does this segment show Straub’s personal style, it also features a pretty scary moment, and lets you see how the town is falling apart while Richard walks. The following excerpt appears early in the third act, which Straub has titled “Dominion”:
Richard Allbee, who was walking up Mount Avenue to his job every morning, also thought that either the world or he was slipping a gear – he saw such oddness on these walks! Both John Roehm, the contractor he had hired for the Hillhaven job, and the client knew what had happened to Richard; the client had asked him if he wanted to put the job off for a couple of months, but Richard, who knew that John Roehm had his own bills to pay, had insisted on starting the work on the agreed day. This had been a good idea, After his first period of mourning – that period of deep shock, during which he almost had to remind himself to breathe, when he had burrowed deep inside his fantasy – and after he had talked and cried with Graham and Patsy and Tabby, working helped to carry him out of himself. In fact, he could leave his misery for minutes at a time just watching John Roehm work. If carpentry were an art John Roehm would have been a Rembrandt: he’d lay he big hands on a piece of heavy unwieldly oak and make it dance and sing, he was so good he could practically whittle the porch pickets they had to make as part of the Hillhaven job. And an old-timer like Roehm appreciated the techniques Richard wanted to use in the interior of the house – making molds to replace the broken plaster ceilingwork, cutting the beads in at the corner of the window trim and doorjambs where someone twenty years ago had “modernized” them away. Roehm was also interested in testing the library paneling with mineral spirits and laqueur thinner to determine it’s original shade. All this spoke right to Richard’s heart, and sometimes he felt tears jumping to his eyes as he watched white-bearded old Roehm execute some dazzling an offhand bit of craftman’s artistry with a saw and a section of oak. It is possible that John Roehm and the Hillhaven restoration saved Richard from Desmond O’Hara’s fate – he had to do a lot of the lifting and carrying, since his and Roehm’s assistants kept quitting, and even though he looked five years older than he had in May, he was gaining new muscle. At night he fell down straight into exhausted sleep. He broiled something in his kitchen, not looking at the place on the counter where the severed telephone receiver had lain, ate his pork chop or steak with a cold bottle of beer, and started yawning before eight-thirty. So his days were okay: apart from his feeling, at any unguarded moment, that his stomach and his heart and probably his lungs too had been blown away on the seventeenth of June, Richard was okay at work. If he watched the direction in which his thoughts were taking him, and took the hammerblows when they came because he was half-prepared for them, he was fine at work. It was during his walks up to Hillhaven on Mount Avenue that he most doubted his capacity to get through the day.
It was a good and useful walk, and it got him to work with his muscles stretched and ready. Between the big houses on Mount Avenue he could see flashes of the Sound, and when he turned the last corner, pausing to look at the massive ivy-covered house where Graham had met Dorothy Bach at the end of the twenties, he had arrived at low flat Hillhaven beach. By the middle of the summer, this beach was filled with people all day long, and from them rose a dense, compacted odor of sun and salt, of tanning lotions and sweat. In the mornings, the tide was in, and the blue-black water muscled right up to the first row of sunbathers, stretched out on their towels across a rack of drying seaweed; in the evenings as Richard walked home the beach trailed off into a bumpy landscape of glittering slat pools and shells through which brawny seagulls hunted and pecked, These visions of ordinariness, of the world going through its customary cycle, helped Richard wean himself from the considerably less ordinary visions he had passed on his way to Hillhaven beach.
The first odd thing Richard saw, back at the start of the Hillhaven job – the first day, in fact, that he had decided to start walking the two miles between his home and the new job – was that Charlie Antolini had at last got himself out of the hammock and was now painting his house, All that was odd about Charlie’s paint job was the exuberant cheer of the painter and the color he was slopping on his house. Charlie Antolini grinned down from his scaffold when he saw Richard walking past, he shouted out, “Hey buddy! Great day, huh? Un-f*cking-believable!” From the big paintbrush in Charlie Antolini’s extended hand dripped strings of bright pink – pink so bright it seemed to sizzle when it fell on the grass and bushes beneath the scaffold. On the house, this paint had a Day-Glo aggressiveness. Charlie, that first morning, had covered half a side wall of his barnlike colonial. It took Richard a moment to see that he had also covered the shutters, the sills, and the windows with this glaring, glossy pink.
As the days went on, Richard saw Charlie Antolini not only cover all his windows with the paint and slop it on the front door in the spirit of a man chistening a ship, but (“Let’s make this ol’ momma really shine, hey? Whaddaya say?”) climb up to the roof and start slapping it on the shingling there, Richard stopped walking, called something back to Charlie, and held his breath as he saw his neighbor approach his enormous television antenna. Would he upend a bucket over the skeletal contraption, or would he try to trace all those angles and lines with his brush? He saw Charlie briefly consider the problem, and solve it pointillistically. He dabbed pink swabs on the main post of the antenna, and waved his brush over the rest to speckle it; then Charlie winked at Richard, happy that someone had witnessed his ingenuity,
Along about this time Richard also witnessed Flo Antolini speeding off down Beach Trail in a car so full of suitcases that the rear window was blocked.
Yes, those things Richard certainly saw, there was no doubt about them. But other things were not so easy.
Did he, for example, really see a tall spindly man dressed in a shabby frock coat and droopy gray leggings jogging past him as he took his walk to work? The man resembled some foolish frog-hunting bird, or a scarecrow so hapless that his fields were picked clean of seeds in minutes, but he resembled something or someone else even more, and Richard turned to watch him clumsily thump past, trying to find the resemblance in his memory. He saw jug cars redly irradiated in the early light, and then he had it: He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat that the top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose… It was Ichabod Crane, the Connecticut schoolteacher of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Richard watched him thud along Mount Avenue, his flat head bobbing in time with his steps, Ichabod Crane with flapping hands and feet, and when he turned into the curve, Richard went out into the middle of the road to be able to see him a moment longer.
Ichabod Crane. On Mount Avenue. In a world where his wife had ben so brutally killed, that was as possible as anything else.
The oddness increased. The day after seeing Ichabod Crane jog past him, Richard looked into a car driving down Mount Avenue and saw an appartion from the twenties in Berlin – from the Berlin of Christopher Isherwood. Behind the wheel was a blond woman dressed in male formal gear, black evening clothes, jetty studs winking from the starched white shirtfront, neat black tie strapping a wing collar, She wore a monocle and smoked a yellow cigarette in a long ivory holder. Her hair was cut like a boy’s, and in an instant Richard had of herm he saw that her skin was cratered with tiny scars. Her eyes slid toward him, and he froze in mid-stride: she was not from this world, she was malignant as a tumor and her glance on his skin felt like the cut of a knife, Then the woman sped down Mount Avenue, and Richard was sure that the earth opened to take her car the instant that she rounded the curve in front of Tabby’s old house.
The next day Richard saw a man whose entire body seemed to be wrapped in bandages duck behind a gatepost on the inland side of Mount Avenue as he approached, but this he knew was no hallucination. The man was a “leaker” – Richard was not even sure where he had first heard the awful term, but he knew it. There were children in Hampstead who chased these poor dying creatures through the streets, trying to pierce the protective shell of bandages and let the life out of them. It was no wonder the poor leaker fled when he saw someone coming. Richard could hear the man breathing huskily from behind the thick concrete gatepost as he walked by and he started to say, “It’s all right, I’m just walking to work, but he got no further than the first word when the panicked leaker jumped from his shelter and flung himself down the road away from Richard. Richard’s heart moved, watching the poor doomed creature flap down Mount Avenue – this was worse than seeing the woman from hell, for the suffering leaker, a fellow being in distress, spoke more directly to him, gave him back an image of himself, Desperation, extremity, panic.
And several days later, as if the torment of these moments were ordained to grow in a geometrical progression, what he saw was much worse. After that, he drove up Mount Avenue to Hillhaven and kept his eyes straight ahead,
It began simply. A nondesript black car came up from behind Richard only a few minutes after he had started to stride up the Golden Mile, flashed its brake lights and pulled over, The driver would have the Hagstrom Atlas for Patchin County open on his lap, and as soon as Richard came near enough to be seen through the window, he would ask, “Is this Mount Avenue?” Or “Am I going the right way to get to Hillhaven?” Any pedestrian on Mount Avenue was likely to be buttonholed by a driver made insecure by the absense of road signs. The black car – some kind of Chevrolet, Richard saw – sat quietly by the side of the road, waiting for Richard to draw up beside it. It trembled once, like a sleepy dog.
The car had stopped directly in front of the old Smithfield house.
Richard stepped forward, eager to be helpful, and the driver’s door opened. Then the passenger door swung open too, Richard hesitated foir a moment, and the hesitation may have saved his life, One of the rear doors, the one on his side, also opened, Richard took a step backward – suddenly the innocuous little car seemed surounded by a sinister light. Three of its doors open as it sat beside the road on the sunny July morning, the black Chevrolet resembled a squatting insect, a beetle. A fly. For a second nothing happened except that Richard’s mouth dried: he did not know why, but he was afraid of whoever was in that car.
Then Laura stepped out of the passenger side of the black Chevrolet.
Richard groaned: all the other things he had seen had led him to this one unbearable sight, his wife getting out of a nondescript black car on her long legs and turning to look at him with a face in which expression seemed too tightly packed to be readable. Her hair moved in the slight breeze from the Sound.
A man got out on the driver’s side and like Laura turned to stare at Richard, he wore a torn madras jacket; a bright yellow Lacoste polo shirt smeared with mud covered his oaken belly. Another man, older than the driver and with a dull, clay-colored bald head, stepped out of the backseat. The three of them stood mutely beside the black Chevrolet and gazed at Richard. Their faces were alike, he saw: not crowded with conflicting expressions but empty of all expression. Their faces were dead.
Laura opened her mouth, and Richard instantly reacted out of horrified instinct – he clapped his hands over his ears. Whatever this dead Laura had to say was what he did not want to hear, he took several slow steps backward, and saw the two men begin to move slowly down the sides of the car toward him.
Richard stepped backward oncem twice morem said, “No, go away, get out of here,” and when they kept up their slow progress toward him, turned and ran – flung himself down the road, like the previous day’s leaker. Desperation, extremity, panic.
Fifteen feet before him was a drive of crushed red rock betwen brick pillars. Richard wheeled into it and pelted up the drive between a line of maple trees and a tennis court behind a line of tall chain-link fence. Finally he saw the gray stone mansion at the end of the drive. Behind it, the sea flashed light at him. The downstairs curtains were drawn, and the house had a heavy, brooding, unoccupied look. Richard had no idea what he would say if someone opened the door to his knocking.
He jumped up the steps and leaned on the bell. In his mind he saw Laura moving inexorably down the road, turning into the dusty red drive… Richard kept his finger on the bell.
Footsteps came toward the side of the door, paused; a bolt slid into a latch, The door opened an inch or two and a white suspicious face looked at him over a taut length of chain.
“I live across the street,” Richard said, playing the card that would mean the most on Mount Avenue. “Some people out on the street are… uh, I think they’ll kill me.”
“So you say,” replied the old man behind the door.
“I’m scared to death,” Richard said.
“Right now, that’s not too dumb,” the old man said, and unhooked the chain. He raised his right hand and Richard saw that in it was a sleek black automatic pistol. “That’s not too dumb at all. So you came up here for help?”
Richard nodded.
“Well, I don’t mind giving you a hand. I’ll just run ’em off with this thing. She has a full clip in her too, in case we need a little firepower.”
Richard was so rattled that he never stopped to think: why would pistols frighten people who were already dead?
He and the small white-haired man set off down the drive. Richard had to walk fast to keep up with his savior, and as they skirted down the tennis court, he learned that the man’s name was Charles Daisy, that he was a widower with six grandchildren, a retired lawyer. “Got a little target range down in the basement, that’s why I’m pretty handy with this old girl here, ‘course we all shot skeet at the Wampetaug Country Club from November to February, that sharpens up the eyes like you wouldn’t believe…” They had reached the end of Daisy’s drive. “Where are they?” the old man asked, looking perkily up and down the avenue. “Where do you suppose they went?”
Richard was looking right at them – they had not moved since he had turned and run. Laura’s impassive face started toward him; a thousand familiar but drowned feelings were latent in her flesh. he saw a few deleicate bloodstains – feathers of rust – rising up her neck from the top of her blouse,
“They cut and run, didn’t they?” crowed Charles Daisy. “They were just scum, son, that’s all, scum looking for a soft place to settle. They won’t bother you now.” Daisy looked at him and amazed Richard by winking one of his webbed blue eyes. “I recognize you, you know. Took me a second, but then I had you, You were the boy in that series. Spunky. You were Spunky.”
Richard knew that he was making a serious mistake, but he could not help himself, he asked, “Can’t you see them?”
Daisy cocked his head.
“They’re right there. Right where they were before, Two men and a woman. I could even tell you the license number of the Chevy. It’s TBC 67…”
“You get the hell out of here,” Daisy said to him. His white little face had turned pink. “You just take off down the road, actor boy, or I’ll put a bullet in your throat. I mean it. Get moving.”
“I’m not crazy,” Richard said.
“Thought you’d get old Charlie Daisy out here on the road and jump him? Thought you’d get yourself a nice place on Mount Avenue? Is that what you thought? You didn’t know old Charlie daisy very well, did you?” He flourished the gun in Richard’s gerneral direction. Richard saw that if he wanted to, he could snatch the gun from Daisy’s hand.
“I just wanted your help, Mr. Daisy,” he said.
This made the old man even more furious. “Move! Get away from me!” Daisy backed away from Richard and leveled the gun at his chest.
Richard moved. He dared say no more. He turned his back on the man and walked toward the little group around the car. In agony, he glanced once at Laura’s face. Eyes open, she looked asleep. She was not there except for him, And she and the others could not take him while furious Charles Daisy watched him go. Either that, or the Dragon had worked out some new trick for him. He got so far off the right side of the road that his shoulder scraped and rustled in the thick bushes, Old Charlie Daisy was still behind him with his fat pistol pointed at his back, but that was not why Richard’s stomach flet knotted tightly as a boot lace, he glanced sideways and down as he went past the carm ans saw that the driverm the one with the madras jacket and the plo shirt, wore nothing on his feet, which were plump, white, and crusted with filth. But for the dirt, they were very preppy feet. The skin had peeled itself back over a couple of serious abrasions, but those feet had not bled. The skin had parted, but there had been no pain and no blood.
He was terrified that Laura would speak to him until he has gone at least thirty yeards down the road.
When he was at the job, John Roehm was sitting on the tailgate of his pick-up in the client’s driveway. To his right, extending over the edge of the tailgate, was a stack of white, freshly sawn oak boards. Roehm looked like Satna Clause in a flannel shirt and red suspenders, sitting beside his treasure, “Thought we could begin on those shelves today, after we test the paneling. Happened to find some pretty decent oak yesterday evening. Best I ever seen, to tell you the truth.”
“If you like, John,” Richard said.
Roehm tilted his massive head. “Another beautiful day, boss.”
“I guess it is, John.”
Looking at him, Roehm saw everything; saw enough, anyhow. “We’ll just take it a little by slow, boss. Little by slow.” And he meant everything he said. Richard helped him carry the oak boards into the house.
See, that was some hairy, creepy stuff. It’s just packed deep into long, billowing paragraphs.
Straub has a lot of books under his belt, I’ll read another one, preferably with less characters. Floating Dragon has just too many of them to serve as an introduction to the writer.
Or maybe I’m just not as grown-up as I think I am. Maybe my biggest problem with Straub, and other horror writers is the same problem I had a long time ago, he just isn’t Stephen King.
Anyway, if you like complex, interwoven plots that all end up connecting at one place, told by a guy who clearly enjoys what he’s doing, and you like try a horror book NOT written by you know who… Floating Dragon is the sort of challenge you may enjoy. If not, find another book from my list. By God, I’ve given you plenty to look at.
My name is Chris Hyatte and I will rape your momma if it’ll MAKE YOU READ!!!
I KNOW WHAT YOU WATCHED LAST WEEKEND
Top five movies of the week, daddio!!
1) Hero: $17.8 million opening weekend. This one of them Jap flicks where everyone does everything really fast? Give me fat ol’ greasy Stephen Segal practicing the craft of minimilist acting anyday. Yeah, if I want unreal, impossible fight scenes, I’ll watch ol’ Stevie S go from waddling around on camera dressed in black mumus then turning into a lightening quick, extra-flexible Ju-Jitsuing machine on a dime. If your going toi see a bad movie, at least see a movie that you KNOW will be bad and you KNOW the lead actor still thinks it’s 1990 and he’s a regular guest on the Arsenio show.
There is only ONE movie named “Hero” in my world, pal… and Dustin Hoffman is in it (with a cameo from Chevy Chase).
Jet Li impressed me when he took down Riggs and Murtaugh (bitch pulled a GUN APART, YO!!)… and hasn’t done shit for me since. And why does he still have zits all over his face? No tough bad ass should be running around with zits on his face.
2) Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid: $13.2 million opening weekend. Do you honestly mean to tell me that Kari Wuhrer, Eric Stoltz, and Jon Voight all were TOO BUSY to do the sequal? Yeah, like being killed in the first one really matters! I mean, even if Jon Voight (there was a time kids… long ago… where Voight did oscar-calibur films and those were ALL he did) REALLY couldn’t get it done… then why not hire Gary Busey, for chrissakes!!
You know what these two movies up top mean? Means it’s gonna be SUCK-CITY at the movies until October.
3) Without a Paddle: $8.7 million ($27.8 million total) You know who should be President? The agent who scores Seth Green all these roles. That rat fink apparently sell ANYTHING. If he were alive 2004 years ago, he could have sold Christ to the Jews.
Seth Greene’s acting skills makes Steven Seagal look like the next Judy Dench!
4) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement: $8 million ($75 million total) Call me crazy but this flick wasn’t aimed at my demographic… thus it doesn’t care what I think and I don’t care that it doesn’t care that I don’t care!
However, since this movie stars another one of them young, teenage actresses who are slowly taking over Hollywood while we sit back and do NOTHING, I thought I’d use this movie to show you current teenage boy dream Lindsay Lohan lighting a butt in her car as she waits for her boyfriend.. Here’s the lesson, kids… no matter how dolled up you are, smoking makes you look like a truck driving mother of 3… with dykish tendencies.
5) Exorcist: The Beginning: $6.7 million ($30.8 million total). Renny Harlin can suck me. The first movie was so goddam disturbing because it was 90% two priests vs one little girl with Satan inside her. No matter how you spruce up the sequels, you simply can’t top two Priests going head to head with FUCKING SATAN!!!!!
The only way this franchise could possibly continue is to get Steven Seagal in there to take out Satan. Then, by Christ, we’ll go see it!
In other movie news: Kevin Smith, who, in 2001 announced that he was DONE with his dick and fart Jersey movies and will now GROW… will EVOLVE as a filmaker and start doing more MATURE, GROWN-UP fare… has announced that the next movie he’s doing is The Clerks 2: The Passion of the Clerks…
That fat, smelly, LYING cocksucker… see, this is what happens when you bank your movie on the star power of Ben Affleck… you end up making a f*cking fool of yourself and come crawling back, tail tucked NICELY, to youyr bread and butter.
Someone PLEASE tell Kevin Smith that friends are friends, but money is money and he will be WISE to avoid letting Ben Affleck anywhere NEAR his movie for… I’d say the next seven years.
I guess I’m done.
SHE’S COMING OUT SO YOU BETTER GET THIS PARTY STARTED
Don’t ask me how, but I have the AIM screen name of resident rock girl, former heroin junkie, chain smoker, sometimes ugly/sometimes hot, prefers the company of black men unless you are Tommy Lee: PINK.
No, I don’t talk to her… I tried (my standard opening line when talking to famous females is “Please don’t sleep with Ben Affleck”), but she has so far resisted my charms.
Anyway, YOU might be a fan of Pink… so I thought I’d mention this. The last time she logged on, she had the following in her profile:
i REALLY want this, Whoever gets it for me will get a lil prize when i come in town!:-D
It’s a collection of B-sides from the Cure.
She uses the name “Alecia Moore” for her wishlist… and is a big fan of Blink182… must be f*cking one of them.
So, someone buy it for her… if you’re a fan.
I like her voice… and when she’s dolled up she’s a firecracker… but my personal philosophy is to never go near the leftovers of either Dennis Rodman or Tommy Lee…. its just not worth the stress, people!
Oh, okay… how do I REALLY know its her? Why, the fake Trish Stratus gave me her name, THAT’S how!
TRIPLE H IS BETTER THAN YOU
I, for one, am so sick and tired of HHH bashing that I have decided on this, a brand new, ongoing gimmick.
Every week, I shall list one good thing Triple H has done that makes him a much better person than YOU, John Q. C-Sucker, who has never done anything for anyone…… and probably a fan of Ring of Honor too, you PERVERT!!
Triple H Is Better Than You Because……
For the love of Rick James… he is NOT intentionally trying to undermine Randy Orton’s rise in order to keep his ass on top… will you GODDAM CLUELESS INTERNET COCKSUCKERS STOP “REPORTING” THAT HE IS!!! I’M TALKING TO YOU, PW TORCH’S JAMES GUTTMAN!!! I CAUGHT THAT LITTLE INSINUATION YOU MADE!!! FUCKING STOP IT!!! JUST STOP IT!! LEAVE THE GUY ALONE!!! HE’S TRYING TO MAKE THINGS BETTER!!!!
You too, Dave Scherer. Go to more marriage counseling sessions with your wife before you talk about the McMahon family stability. I hear things. I hear lots and lots of things.
THIS HAS BEEN ‘TRIPLE H IS BETTER THAN YOU’……STARRING TRIPLE H! WRITTEN, DIRECTED, AND PRODUCED BY CHRIS HYATTE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
DOING LINES CAUGHT ON FILM
I found a few websites, and a lot of you have been GREAT with the submissions. I’m doing okay with movies/TV shit… so if yuou don’t mind, focus on wrestling. I need wrestling promoes and little quips. Thanks.
This time, we focus on some great extended bits of dialogue… ONE line from a TV show… lots of movies that you may have not even heard about, much less seen, and an OLD SCHOOL appearence from Gene “THE FUCK” Hackman (from that crazy time known as the 70’s!! Which many of you only know through books and VH1 specials)
And, as a special treat, I’m book-ending this with TWO lines from… well, why give it away! All you have to do is look exactly one line down.
01): Grandma just called and said you’re supposed to go home.
She didn’t tell me anything.
Too bad, she said she doesn’t want you here when she gets back because you’ve been ruining everybody’s lives and eating all our steak.
I’m not goin’ anywhere, Napoleon.
Get off my property!
It’s a free country. I can do whatever I want.
Get off my property or I’ll call the cops on you.
Well then do it! Go on!
Maybe I will! GOSH!– Napoleon Dynamite
02): Boy, that escalated quickly… I mean, that really got out of hand fast!
It jumped up a notch!
It did, didn’t it?
Yeah, I stabbed a man in the heart!
I saw that! Brick killed a guy! Did you throw a trident?
Yeah, there were horses, and a man on fire, and I killed a guy with a trident!
Brick, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. You should find yourself a safehouse or a relative close by. Lay low for a while, because you’re probably wanted for murder.– Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
03): What the hell are you doing with my wife?
Y-you said we could have sex with her!
I most certainly did not!
Yes you did!
Did not!
Yes you did!
You sure?
You said it!
(laughing) My mistake! Well, since we’re all here… How ’bout a foursome?– Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
04): Otis, is that the newspaper I asked you to get me?
Yeah.
Why am I not reading it?
‘Cause I haven’t given it to you yet?
Right…– Superman
05): I don’t trust this kid any further than I can throw him.
Well, with your bad knee Ed, you shouldn’t throw anybody… It’s true.
What is so dangerous about a character like Ferris Bueller is he gives good kids bad ideas. Last thing I need at this point in my career is fifteen hundred Ferris Bueller disciples running around these halls. He jeopardizes my ability to effectivley govern this student body.
Well, makes you look like an ass is what he does, Ed.– Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
06): Can we read it?
No.
Can you paraphrase it for us?
I don’t think so.
Is it dark?
Of course it’s dark. It’s a suicide note.– The Royal Tenenbaums
07): Murdock…
He’s here.
(gives the receiver to Murdock)
Rambo, this is Murdock, we’re glad you’re alive. Where the hell are you? Give us your position and we’ll come to pick you up!
Murdock…
(fist tightens on microphone)
I’m coming to get YOU!– Rambo: First Blood Part Two
08): You’re telling me she cut through eighty-eight bodyguards before she got to O-Ren?
Nah, there weren’t really eighty-eight of them. They just called themselves “The Crazy 88.”
How come?
I don’t know. I guess they thought it sounded cool.
(and later)
You hocked a Hattori Hanzon Sword?
Yep.
It was priceless.
Well, not in El Paso, it ain’t. In El Paso I got me $250 for it.– Kill Bill: Volume 2
09): You know what I can do with a single strand of Superman’s hair?
You can make a toupee that flies!– Superman IV: The Quest for Peace
10): Back off cockboy, what I said him goes double for you.
Cockboy, you just call me cockboy?
Yeah, you know I did. You’re just stalling cuz you’re not quick enough to think of a comeback.
You think I’m not quick enough. Guy thinks I’m not quick enough. Well I got news for you. I am quick enough! Cockboy!– Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
12): Hey Garth! How’s the divorce?
Oh, not so good… I’ll probably never see my kids again…
FAN-tastic!– Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
13): So how are things going with you and your girlfriend?
Well, I think it’s getting pretty serious. We chat online for like two hours a day so yeah, you could say it’s getting pretty serious.– Napoleon Dynamite
HA!!! Oh… I mean, HEY!!!
2 hours a day? Man, that’s romper room. Try going fo… oh, let’s NOT go there. In fact, let’s end this show now.
On THURSDAY… I’ll show up with stuff. What kind of stuff? Dunno… but stuff. Lots and lots of stuff.
Lots of stuff to cram up your ASSES, FAGS!!!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA
This is Hyatte
