IT MIGHT BE A BLOG...not sure

So I’ve hit (and am close to finishing) the penultimate chapter in book one of THE BIG UGLY. The actual last chapter is mainly falling action….the real action climaxes in this one. In many respects it closes the door on this part of the book and it opens the door on the next, introducing newer, better situations but also some new problems. This has been one long, twisted process, transcribing/revising from both the original manuscript and the 2014 screenplay version, as well as adding new parts. With the whole drawing-from-new-sources thang a lot of it is, because, frankly, I’m a helluva lot better at writing dialogue than I was back then. Particularly the pivotal, story-changing conversation at the end of the chapter, which I feel is less forced and clumsy than the old version. As far as new parts, that was something that originally came with the screenplay. The biggest elephant in the room is that the world is different now from the way it was in ‘89 and ‘90. Technology has changed the world drastically. Jack and his friends and enemies were originally living in a world that didn’t have social media—imagine THAT being folded into the story! How would Cyber Bullying play into the story? You’ll hafta wait and see. The societal landscape has generally evolved—granted the overall makeup of Brookdale High and Jack’s world have not changed that dramatically—he still lives in a buttfuck suburb and the bullies still run things. But we live in this whole other world, now. Representation is a huge topic these days….racism isn’t a huge topic in the book—-there’s no bias against color—Blinky Epstein gets some antisemitism leveled at him, but it’s less because he is Jewish and more because he’s disliked, and the fact that he’s Jewish is just a handy excuse. Homophobia, of course, is rampant…as far as gay representation, the only factor in either manuscript is Marc Hodge—--he’s awkward and effeminate and I never come out and say whether he’s actually queer or not—the fact of the matter is what happens to him is horrible, regardless of his orientation, so does it matter? The point isn’t his orientation—the point is that what happens to him is horrible. As I’ve said before, as a teenager, I carried a kind of tacit homophobia in me which still had its remnants hanging on when I was first working on the book. I was shedding it at that time, but it took a while to rid myself of that kind of heteronormative thinking—it came from my upbringing, it came from the religion I was brought up in. It takes some time to deprogram yourself. One thing I did in the current chapter (this dates back to the screenplay) involves the party at Doug’s house…it’s very much a split scene—-it’s a dual party thrown by Doug because he’s gotten a big art scholarship, and his older brother, who’s out of school and going into the military. So there’s an artificial and tentative divide between the basement and the rest of the house, high school kids and older kids/young adults who are out of school. The line blurs in this pseudo-dichotomy, because it’s a party, and everyone’s getting fucked up, regardless of what school they go to. Jack makes his way to the top floor to use the only available bathroom…on his way, he’s forced to fight his way past a situation where two guys are having some kind of an aggressive confrontation and it makes him afraid. On his way back he realizes that he completely misunderstood the confrontation and the two guys are making out. He stumbles through the scenario as a number of the guys’ friends have their cell phones going off and are chanting their approval. Jack, in his own thoughts, blunders through this tableau and becomes the accidental star of “half a dozen Tik Toks”. It’s a mindfuck to him, but in a positive way—as he notes, you don’t see this at Brookdale High. In a small way, anyway, it goes to show him that life after high school might offer a little less bullshit and a little more autonomy. Anyway, I’ve got one chapter to go and it’s a small one and Book I is a done deal….so I’m fulfilling my goal of getting that bad boy knocked out. Book III is actually half-written, Book II is not done at all. In a lot of ways it will require the most change. It’s a mess. It’ll be the shortest—at least maybe the BRIGHTEST book of the novel before the bobsled ride through insanity of part three. This is not your standard Joseph Campbell Hero Journey…..I have no interest in following that. Jack hits a place where he can look at what he’s done and reaches the conclusion that in the long run things have turned out well and his work is probably done here. Whether you, the reader, agree with Jack’s assessment is entirely up to you. He’s that kind of narrator.

In the Meantime, LOOK AT THIS DOG. THIS WEEK’S PLAYLIST: MAGMA-Udu Wudu MAGMA-Attahk REDD KROSS-Phaseshifter Copyright 2022 Molotov Editions

RANDO STUFF

I haven't posted much recently. You can tell I'm going through my files and trying to consolidate some stuff. Throwing some stuff up because I don't want y'all to get too lonely out there. Enjoy.

KEIN Will will will not be part Will will will want to be a part Will want to be a part not be part not of what was - there was nothing not by what comes soon not by anything of it ... RED FLAG Gwen was smashed . She dumped the contents of her purse on the couch in a mad search for her cell phone. “Aw. What’s this?!” She made a point of alerting my attention to the tiny wad of yellow, lined paper among the trash. “How did this thing get here?” I honestly didn’t care about it, but she followed herself up quickly and without prompting. “Okay, okay, it’s coke,” she shouted, just a hair too loudly. “That doesn’t bother you, does it? I mean, I do it sometimes. It’s not meth, I promise---I wouldn’t do that. Well, I did do meth once, with my Ex, but I don’t do that anymore. You don’t mind, do you? Well, I know you wouldn’t hold it against me…you wouldn’t, would you? No….that’s what I love about you, baby. You’d never do that. I know you worry about me, but you’d never judge 2 me, would you? I love you like that, babe…I’m just sayin’ it, you know? I know hearing the ‘L’ word gets you nervous, but I love you like that….you know? I’m just sayin’ it, okay, babe? I’m just sayin’ it ‘cause I’m sayin’ it ‘cause I’m sayin’ it…” Copyright 2022 C.F. Roberts/Molotov Editions THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST: PINK FLOYD-Piper at the Gates of Dawn PINK FLOYD-The Wall BLACK SABBATH-Paranoid STIC BASIN 3

I just found it lying around, so....

It's the trajectory of every Little Hitler on every street corner in every godforsaken hamlet. You make a crack and get a wry laugh in return----is the laugh sympathetic, taken aback by the inappropriateness, resigned solidarity----or was it simple contempt you heard? Yes, you realize it was probably contempt. He loses; That's what he does. That's his primary function. He's not just a garden variety loser----he loses so spectacularly it feels like some kind of triumph. He loses at the top of his lungs, in broad, godforsaken daylight, screaming five miles down to the ground without a parachute. He stumbles from one room to the next and contemplates the emptiness inside----literal, not figurative, due to the vast portions of innards that have been redistributed elsewhere for study. Maybe someday a cure for him will be found. Hope springs eternal. Make no mistake---he's ugly. And not just on the outside. His mind is a mess of sordid pictures---barbaric scenarios and bodily fluids---piss-and-jizz smelling backrooms, urine-and-tear-stained gauze curtains masking a legion of bleak sunrises, rectal residue pooling in bathtubs, violent, chaotic slapstick clown rape routines. The living end, hallmarks of what he tentatively terms “erectile therapy”. It's a long hit-and-miss process. He reckons there may be no silver bullet, no once-and-for-all boner pill, but he labors on like a mongoloid toddler, hoping the endless, degrading self-therapy will eventually help him feel like a man again....if he manages to remember how that feels. “I thought I heard you say I'd never be a Man,” he remembers saying. It was some outing and the crowd in concern were his father and a group of his father's friends. They all laughed obligingly. “Oh, no. it's okay! You'll be a man!” And clapped him on the back. He was twenty-three. The conversation still haunts him. Tonight he will laugh and drink with friends, forget the ugly omens of tomorrow and ignore the terror in the cavities of his body left hollow. He fantasizes about having no legs below the knees. He figures it's the next logical step in the rolling autopsy and hell, maybe he can live with it. What kind of world will it be? “A world where people like me don't have to be lonely.” The marquis reads, TWO BILLION DEAD, NO WAITING

DIOGENES

 

It seems as though I’ve spent much of my life in search of a reliable narrator and they’re a lot less frequent than you’d think. It’s way past the point of Democrats and Republicans flailing in the dogshit of ideology; the narrative of TruthTM these days is less a dichotomy and more a smashed mirror, with various shards of divergent shapes and sizes all over the floor, precarious to touch and hard to pick up and sift through without cutting yourself to ribbons.

On any given day I might ask, father, what is the lesson? I might get nine hundred lessons from nine hundred mooks all presuming to be a father of one sort or another. Well, stand between the sun and me, douche…I might say, tell me a story, storyteller, and it’s anyone’s guess what that might invite….you might get the nice classic Jane Eyre or the nudge-nudge-wink-wink edition complete with flesh eating zombies. Or tomorrow’s grocery list. What passes for a story these days? Gone is the time when you could leaf open THE NEW YORKER and find the new literary lions cutting their teeth. THE NEW YORKER isn’t J.D. Salinger anymore.

“Then again,” I aside to my neighbor at the bar, “I don’t think J.D. Salinger is even J.D. Salinger anymore.” She gives me the side-eye and excuses herself.

They all seem to do that these days.

It’s a lively night, regardless. The noisy sons of bitches are engaged in their usual strip poker match over at the big table. Taggart ups the ante by throwing in a nine pound Silver Surfer doll. Pops throws all his cards down and demands a new hand. Turk lights the whole pot on fire and it’s all just in the middle of the table, burning merrily away, and it just makes my heart swell with Patriotic sentiment---that’s when the fire department bust in and hose the whole table down, and then everybody’s throwing punches. Time to hit the floor.

I know this isn’t an ordinary night when the reinforcements come in with the big hose. It’s about a foot wide and gushes gallons of mayonnaise at a high pressure----and when you see a big oak table like that collapse you realize how much damage mayonnaise can do.

It hits me that this isn’t the regular town fire department when Beggs decapitates the fire marshall. The big tip-off is when the fire marshall’s head sprouts wings and grows to the size of a big man’s torso.

Goddamn killer androids.

It flies around the bar cackling for a while and eventually seizes Elsie, the barkeep’s daughter, in its mouth---it flies around for a while before the real fire department shows up. They’re all armed and they start taking pot shots at the head.

At this point I feel torn from my role as terminal observer. “Watch out for Elsie,” I shout.

The fire department deserve the benefit of the doubt, of course; they are professionals, after all. Soon they’ve blown that confounded android head away and Elsie’s safe and Taggart has even offered to mop up all the mayonnaise. He’s a sport. It’s drinks on the house, and the barkeep’s two cats, the blue one, Hitler, and the pink one, Bill Clinton, come to the balcony, and the fire chief is pointing and laughing at the cats and the cats are pointing and laughing at the fire chief.

We all lose track of time. Old Spike starts hammering away on the piano like a speedfreak and Elsie leads everybody in a singalong of “Bonny Barbara Allen”. The Denby boys from across the lake arrive on horseback and everyone buys them a round---they buy their horses a round, too. And everyone’s singing and laughing and joking and the barkeep and Elsie are laughing and joking as are the crazy sons of bitches and the fire department and the cats and the Denby boys and their horses and a good time is had by all, and hell if I don’t even have a swell time.

And Bert, who works over at the Reactor, grew an eleventh finger---really just kind of a mini-finger….not utilitarian at all. Damndest thing.

copyright 2021 C.F. Roberts/Molotov Editions

DREAMING PART ONE

  

    I like to take all the nice things I see and collect them---it's a weird deal----I've got this funny collection full of all these peculiar items in the world that make me feel good; Memorabilia, souvenirs and all that, but mostly it's just stuff I can look at when I'm pissed off or stressed out and it puts me somewhere else and makes me feel a lot better about everything.

    When I was eleven my Mom gave me a scrapbook. One of those scrapbooks you stick photos in, like a family album or something. She gave me this scrapbook and told me I could put anything in it that was important to me.

      I think she wanted to get me off on the right start, so she kicked off the first couple of pages for me. They are easily my least favorite parts of the book; it's all snapshots of me when I was little and birthday cards and stuff from when I was like a year or two old, boring shit like that. Well, okay, maybe it's not totally boring, I bet anthropologists in a few centuries could have a blast with it, but to me it's just sort of depressing and I don't like to look at that stuff.

       So anyway, when she gave it to me, I started to throw stuff in there like there was no tomorrow. It got funny as hell, because I was eleven, and I was throwing anything in there that meant anything to me. I was just whipping out the scotch tape and throwing things onto the pages like a plastic army guy who had his head missing, stupid magazine ads, some pictures from a Batman comic, an Iris I picked, long-since wilted, a hot wheels car, an old shoelace....stuff like that. Pictures of meat in the newspaper supplement. Eleven-year-old kid nonsense. 

    

      I got bored with it, because when you're a young kid you get bored with everything real quick, and then you move on to whatever. But I never throw things away if I can help it. This past Summer I unearthed the old scrapbook again and looked at it. It was great. I was all bummed out over something or other at that time and the contents of the scrapbook really busted my shit up. Being that it was such a dandy remedy for what ailed me, I decided to start collecting shit again.

      I'm older, now, and a little more mature, though I stress “a little”. I still have this scrapbook that's a heel of a lot stranger than most.

     I don't have too many personal things in it; no pictures of me or my parents or relatives, past the first couple pages my Mom threw in there---just different stuff. Big, splashy pictures of sunsets and mountains and islands and oceans and whatnot...places I'd like to go someday. I have this one page that's a cutout yearbook picture of Cheryl Kingsley from every year since eighth grade. It's the only reason I get the yearbook every year. It's the only use I have for it. All Cheryl's pictures are neatly arranged, all churchlike, on that one page. That's the shrine page, the holy page, the page page I have to prepare myself for up in my head before I look at it. 

       Actually, though I largely don't like to stick personal pictures in it, there are always exceptions to the rule and I have my eighth grade school picture in the scrapbook. I hate pictures of me like a cossack, but that one was pretty mean. My Mom hates it. I think it's cool. I was wearing this denim jacket, and I looked all bedraggled and scruffy and dazed and my hair was all unruly and longish (Dad would have probably called it “long”. He thinks everything is “long”.). I looked like a real hoodlum or something. It was like I was in some old movie, getting my mugshot taken for prison.

          So there's that book, which nobody sees, but then there's this other one, like this little notebook, which I write in, and no one ever sees that, either. But it's a little red book, old-fashioned diary book I found in a flea market, with a little lock on it. I write in that book all the time. Yeah, I know, who writes in books anymore? I do. Poetry, ideas for stories, mostly dreams. The ones I remember, anyway. I hate the idea of “diaries”, or “journaling” but okay, so think of it as my dream book.

     Sometimes I think dreams are important----a lot of the time they're probably just your brain throwing up----sometimes I need to write them down, though, because I think about them and I think maybe they might mean something, and I'm wondering if they're trying to tell me stuff about the future, or everyone around me, or maybe just inner stuff about myself. I don't know, maybe it's all just brain vomit, but I always think about this stuff and wonder about it. 

     The dream I had last night I remember in crystal-clear detail, which is real different....it is for me, anyway. Usually my dreams are all hazy and mixed up. This one wasn't, though.

     In the dream, I was home, sitting at the kitchen table, eating Cheerios. My parents were in the other room, watching TV. After I got done eating the cereal I decided to join them and see what they were watching. 

   

     The Good Guy was on the screen, as was usually the case, going through the day-in-day-out, accepted ritual of emptying a gun into the Bad Guy. This time out, it was western times and they were dressed like cowboys. Sometimes it's modern times and The Good Guy is a cop and the Bad Guy is a crook. It's really always the same story.

    I looked over at my parents and they were frozen. They were just bolted in their chairs like a pair of zombies, staring straight ahead.

    I was crying, then, crying real hard. The Good Guy, on TV, kicked the fallen Bad Guy in the ribs and spat on him. The Good Guy always does those things. My parents just stared straight ahead.

      “Mom, Dad,” I said, and I was crying so hard I could barely talk, “I'm wrong. I'm always wrong. I'm sorry I'm wrong.”  They kept staring straight ahead at the Good Guy, like I wasn't there.

     After trying a little longer to no avail, I left my parents frozen in their chairs. I walked halfway across the house so that I wouldn't have to see them anymore. Then I set about attempting to fly.

     I always fly in my dreams and I do it the same way every time. There's a knock to getting airborne, or at least I dream that there is. I guess it's similar to getting on a bike. Some people can ditch the training wheels faster than others. I was one of those flyers who needs a good head start.

     I got off the ground the way I always do in these flying dreams—basically the technique I use is to climb up the doorway in a spider walk and then just let go. If I get it right I can stay afloat in mid-air.

     

     I made it after maybe two or three tries, which is usually what it takes. The first few seconds of one's hover are the most tenuous, and it always feels wicked white knuckles to me. You need to be bouyant in that time and not do anything stupid, like land back on your feet. That could ruin the whole thing.

      I successfully got past those first few seconds of instability and settled gently into float-mode. It felt good, real, pure and alive, as it always does in these dreams. I felt myself rise from five feet off the ground to six as I swam through the air toward the front door. 

    I seized and turned the doorknob, gave the wooden barrier a shove and let myself out. Once I'd gotten out the door it was easy to fly up to eight or nine feet. The best thing about flying is that once you get going the easier it becomes. 

    

     I flew down the length of Dearden Street and turned left on Richdale Road, which I followed down half its length until it intersected with Cook Hill Road. When I fly in my dreams I find that I almost always stick to the roadways. I don't know why. Fear of getting lost?

      Cook Hill Road is this steeper-than-the-steepest hill that causes people in our neighborhood a lot of trouble in the Winter. I looked and saw these two kids barreling downhill on their bikes. The local kids live Cook Hill, riding downhill and playing daredevil. It's one of those roads you can build lots of speed on with your bike. It's cool, like being on a rollercoaster.

     The part which kids never consider is that the hill spills out onto Windham Street, which is the main road. The traffic there, and there's always a lot of it, careens by, both ways, at forty miles an hour. So it's always pretty dangerous. Kids never think about that shit.  

      The two kids hit Windham Street and swerve in opposite directions, one nearly falling off her bike. When they saw there wasn't any traffic headed their way, they both rode across the street to the 7-11.

     Me, I can fly, though, so I bypassed the 7-11 and headed up Windham Street towards downtown Brookdale. I flew past the fresh vegetable stand that's only open part of the year, the garage that's owned by the old Korean guy, and the Delprete House, this old house that's been empty and rotting away for decades. The kids all say it's a murder house, but I don't know how true that is. 

     Further up I saw a dead squirrel in the road, another daily sacrifice we make to the cruel, grinning, chromefaced god of automotive convenience. 

     I tried to look away, but I looked away too late. The little grey body seemed like it had been stretched out on the rack or something. Its inner meat dominated the scene, plastered all over the pavement looking like some creep had decided to garnish the poor thing with salsa for a joke.

     I shut my eye and my jaw loosened and tightened in involuntary spasms. I didn't see its face, but I'm certain that, had I chosen to look further, I would have seen the last expression it wore, and I know it would have been twisted in pain.

     I opened my eyes in time to see an oncoming tree before feeling my forehead scrape the bark and then I was in the gully in Springfield in the back of Freddy Dugan's house. I was in first grade again. Freddy and Lucci were there, throwing rocks at me. One hit me square in the forehead, same exact spot that had collided with the tree, and I saw the blood and then there was a loud screech.

     The screech turned out to be my alarm clock. It was Monday morning, time for school and once again my slumber and peace had been raped by the crazy house in my head.

                                                Copyright 1989 C.F. Roberts/2021 Molotov Editions

       DON'T COME KNOCKING DEPT. # 947: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know back as last year ended I was talking about doing a final bag-and-tag of the Trump years. It's been almost six months and to be honest I got less important things to do. There's enough stupidity and fuckery in all directions to go around and I divorced myself permanently from politics during the primary. The further away from it I get the better I feel, and if you ever need me to come help you get your boy, or girl, or whoever, elected, look elsewhere. I ain't your ally, buckaroo. I gave at the office.

                                      Thank you, drive through----

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

MAX ROACH & CLIFFORD BROWN-The California Concerts 1954

FUNKADELIC-Funkadelic

HAWKWIND-Astonishing Sounds

     

And Etc.

 

THE PINK MUSIC NOTE CANDY

I wanted the pink music note candy. I saw it in a picture book. It looked exquisite beside the illustration of the smiling child. The child in the picture was delighted; the pink music note candy was within her grasp. I knew that, the way it looked, the pink music note candy would be the sweet pinnacle of all candy taste joy, its petal-colored softness melting into my palate would be heavenly.

I went to the living room where my parents were entertaining some aunts and some grandparents. They were occupied in their austere, adult way, having coffee and talking. I told them I wanted the pink music note candy. They told me there wasn't any. I showed them the picture in the book. They told me there wasn't any.

I threw a temper tantrum, then, demanding the pink music note candy. I saw the picture. I knew it was there. I upset some of the china on the coffee table. They scolded me and sent me to bed. There I cried all night, weeping and screaming for the pink music candy. I never saw that picture again, nor did I ever hppen upon the pink music note candy. My life has a hole shorn in it now and I suspect it shall ever be so. It will always be devoid of something because of that ethereal childhood pleasure missed. The long ago tantalizing picture burns in my memory. My days are a weary quest. I crave the pink music note candy, and I must have the pink music note candy.

1993, rev 2021

CITYSCAPE

all becomes abstract and unreal

color and sense dulls

people gaggle and gobble in the wings

like Thanksgiving turkeys primed for martyrdom

life tumbles ahead in oceans

distorted through the haze of

tinted bottles

1993 rev 2021

copyright 1993 C.F. Roberts, 2021 Molotov Editions

THIS WEEK'S PLAYLIST:

REDD KROSS-Hot Issue

REDD KROSS-Born Innocent

STARCRAWLER-Devour You

THE GOOD GUY

 

Excerpt from the forthcoming novel, THE BIG UGLY

jackie

JACKIE

I need all of you to understand one thing

listen to us, jack

Pigs hung this man on a cross because he was a GOOD GUY

they told us it was a bad thing jack a VERY BAD THING

copyright 1990 C.F. Roberts, 2021 C.F. Roberts/Molotov Editions