*****RODENTS*****

"Glimpses: Very Short Stories"

I occasionally find poetry I've written and randomly hidden on my phone and can't remember when or why I wrote any of it. #poetry #amatuerdingdong

“Bed Of Welts”

A light breeze blows

The scent of 

Soft 

Flowering

Jasmine

Through an open window 

Into the dank, dark house

Passed the bags of garbage 

Old newspapers 

Clutter

Junk 

The still remains of the owner 

Moldering on the floor

Up the stairs

Into the bedroom

Over bare mattresses

Flecked with rust golden stains

Then released back out

Into the sickly sweet 

Sun

Of

An

Early

Spring

"Freighters"

There's a music in the machinery
That vibrates
Between the pieces
That echoes
Around the parts

There's a rust around the windows
That reddens
The places
That are separated
By the panes

There's a murmur in the holds
That reverberate
With life
After life
Has left them

As the foundations rot
As the beams weaken
As the hinges break

The freighters sit
In their harbors
Waiting to return

To their seas

“Bright sun is no friend to old books”

A small drip of bright orange ice cream ran over her knuckles and plummeted down onto the picnic blanket. The warm sun cut through the trees hitting the peaks and valleys of her face. Sharp shadows and her soft face made her alternate between beauty and hideousness. 

Her friends eye darted down to the spreading orange mass pooling between her thighs. He coughed a wet mass of green and red phlegm into his hands, eyes watering. 

She looked at him distantly. 

“Are you okay?”

Inside his lungs burned and roiled, rolling over themselves. He coughed again. Red, green, and beige this time. 

“Sure, I’m fine.” He said, his eyes fixed on the drop of orange ice cream warming on his friends pale thigh.

"The Shortest Man In California"

My doubts are compounding

The chorus resounding 

A song I've heard three thousand times

Rote repetition through soft long division 

One after one another in line

Yet I am the stone that cannot be bled

Feet thick as the granite that makes up my head 

My spastic behavior just masks the unsavory 

Words I don't remember I've said

But my lack of conviction 

And memory lapses 

Can't hide all my fears 

And misfiring synapses 

As I spiral out like the last Roman candle 

On the longest Fourth of July 

Here I am

The poor mans sketch of a man

Another short little man

In the western most end 

Of California 

"My Head Is Not My Head”

They keep circling me chanting

“How is my head not my head?

How is my head my head?”

And honestly, I don't know 

There's only one little voice

And it is my own

It's loud and it's yowling

“How is my head not my head?

How is my head my head?”

"Slow Water"

The slow water runs

Through the tangled brush

And the snagged limbs

Of felled trees

Over my body

Down the falls

Into the reservoirs 

The treatment facilities 

And into the bodies 

Of the people in town

Away from the trickle 

Of the slow water

Where I lay silent 

"Bed Of Welts"

“Bone Broth”

Strip off my meat

Strip me down to the bone

Feel my moist warm flesh

Pulsing wet in your hands

Kiss my open mouth

Chew my cracked tongue

Hold my round bald head straight

Pulsing wet in your hands

Make a meal of my cock

Fry the meat with tender herbs

Skewer the tip with soft onion

Pulsing wet in your hands

Cleave my heart in quarters 

Make yourself a hearty stew 

Keep the memory of me

Pulsing wet in your hands

“Invisible Brains”

Her fingers ran over the calcified prominence of its back. The sweet smell of lavender floated in from the window and mixed with low smell of moist bodies inside. The soft clammy flesh just below the exposed bone tensed and it reminded her of holding thawed pork chops in her hand. 

The entire body stiffened and bone gave way to flesh which gave way to the cold dry appendages that curled out from the body on the left and right. 

She momentarily felt white hot excitement flash through her brain and dissipate as quickly as it came. 

The moment was gone and it’s place was the light presence of spring lavender.  

"Wiggle Room"
Hansel, standing in his study looking over the great many volumes of prose and poetry at his disposal, spit on the floor and mumbled bitter words to himself. Outside his grandchildren played on the lawn with his son Archibald's feeble aged terrier Louis, shrieking and screaming and falling about in the way that only spoiled children can. He watched them as they took a deflated ball and began hitting Louis in the face with it. Hansel spit again, this time into the potted begonia his last wife left as a parting gift. They shouldn't be beating on the dog like that, Hansel thought to himself.
Louis had given up and now lay prone on the grass, the bright sun framing his misery in a warm autumn veneer usually only felt in memories.
A loud crack broke Hansel's focus as the children began lobbing rocks at his windows. His study window, the largest one on this side of the house, splintered into a gigantic spider web that sent the sun spiraling into the room in hundreds of directions.
Hansel spit into the spider web and imagined what kind of spider would spin such a beautiful web; would it be poisonous or benign, small or large?
He could feel the spider slowly weaving him into a warm bundle, the enzymes it had pumped into him turning his insides into easily slurped mush, but he didn't care. He didn't mind existence as a malt.
As the web burst sending shards of glass into every corner of the room Hansel watched quietly. He was somewhere else; somewhere warmer; somewhere with meaning and purpose.

"Learning To Walk Again"

She was looking at her fingernails when the man behind the deli counter asked her what she wanted. She looked up at the menu: "warm tuna melt", "Big Bill's Famous Bbq Pulled Pork", "hard salami with creamy Gouda" and so. She gazed down at the assorted pasta salads yellowing in their trays; their mayonnaise bases jelling them into a solid cube like a gelatin mold. The horse fly caught in the case with them was violently beating itself against the glass trying to get away from the congealed "Bacon Macaroni Salad" with the big black serving spoon raised skyward from deep within its guts like so many white flags from so many other failed wars.
"How old is macaroni salad," She said. "The one with the olives and peppercorns, not the kidney beans?"
The teenager behind the counter stared at through his glasses, his red, greasy face glowing under the scrutiny of the fluorescent lighting.
"I think Bill made it yesterday. Hey, Bill! Did you make the macaroni salad yesterday? The one with the olives and peppercorns not the kidney beans?"
There was a shuffle and a cough and Bill, famous around these parts for his signature pulled pork, stuck his head out of the manager's office and let the words "Yeah, sure, I think so" fall out of his mouth in the same manner a goat recalled cud from its stomach up into its mouth. The words sat on the floor in a pile, then he disappeared back into his office leaving only the smell of mid-price cigars in his absence.
"I'll have the tuna melt," she said.
"You sure?"
"I guess, yeah."
"Alright, whatever," the kid said.
She took her number, 45, grabbed a sweet tea and took her seat.
She felt like she made a good choice for lunch. A sensible choice.
She looked over at the illuminated counter full of various pastas. The fly was still there, frantically trying in vain to escape.
She wasn't sure about her choice and inside a growing sense of dread expanded.

"Meeting Opel"

There's something you had heard once, what was it again?
"Cup the balls, stroke the shaft, talk like you're equals."
No. That isn't it. It was more lyrical. Whimsical.
Something that lilted on the breeze like browning autumn leaves.
Caught in an updraft up, up, up....
Then lost in a haze of sepia sunlight; youth woven into perpetual nostalgia, divided by time and strengthened by the distance between.
How did it go? It was simple, right?
"Spit in your palm, spit in his mouth, treat him like an animal."
No?
"Smell his asshole, tongue his mouth"?
"Tongue his asshole, smell his mouth"?
No no no, It's something personal. Something cultural and timeless but still personal, like how no matter how far we drift apart from one another we still come together over home-cooked meals during holidays. Like in old picture books for children. Somewhere in a farmhouse on a hill overlooking a meadow with deer frolicking in a pasture so green it verges on ethereal. There would be smoke slowly curling out of the chimney, and in the back of your brains you just know that an elderly grandmother is inside laboring over an open hearth. Do I smell cinnamon? Apples.....?
No, it was something else, something primal, that's what it was!
"Stuff two fingers up his ass, two fingers up your own ass: Fireworks."
That must be it.
That has to be it.
You get up out of your easy chair, the late afternoon sun creeping lazily through the curtains and you whisk your hand in the dust motes hovering about the room.
The smell of brown sugar surrounds you. Something delicious is nearing ready in the kitchen.
Rubbing your lower back you look to your right. In your head the words "lick it, stick it, prick it" flit to-and-fro.
"Honey," you say. "I had an idea just now."

"And The Rivers Will Boil"

Rodents

- an old woman ruminates on her devolved husband

"What It Is To Fly"

"Here we are," The man shouts. "Brothers, sisters, white, black, yellow, straight, gay, normal, weirdo... All of us a pack of feral assholes." 

He lowers his hands. Beads of sweat racing down his jagged face. Cheeks red, eyes wild, the stubble on his chin visibly unshaven.

"So what do we do? There are a million answers, every one wrong. What then are we to do?" 

Like a carnival barker his arms and shoulders rise and fall; a magician performing slight-of-hand; a tide ebbing in and out.

"None of you are 'right', think about that fact for a minute."

The crowd stands still. A slight wind picks up and the hairpiece on the mans' head gently lilts in the breeze.

"My life isn't worth shit, your lives aren't worth shit," he spits, this time shaken. 

"We're all disgusting pigs; fat, sweaty, filth filled pigs. See?" He reaches into the podium and pulls out a slice of cheese pizza and stuffs it into the crotch of his pants, falling to the stage and sensually grinding his authentic New York style pizza pie into the flooring.

Everyone applauds. A woman in the front row weeps and raises her hands up in a sign if praise. Children set off sparklers; bumpkins shoot their guns. 

That night everyone orders pizza for dinner, and the pizza is good.

"Hors-d'oeuvre"

The pork purée sat atop the pile of uncooked shrimp while I stood there staring at the mess of sour meat. The shrimp were thawed but unpeeled and as I looked into the choir of little black eyes I half-expected them to begin singing. In my head I heard two dozen tiny voices harmonizing an acapella version of Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit'. I imagined them crawling out from under the jellied pork filth that coated them, some even forming small hats and canes from the pink paste, and launching into a conga line. 

I promptly sat down my glass of white wine and turned the oven up to 500, then slid my upper body onto the baking rack and sighed. Today had been a bad day.

"A Sack Of Hot Dogs Fucking A Bag Of Meat"

It was humid and sweaty as the sack of hotdogs took off its' pants. The bag of meat growled sexily. Outside emergency sirens wailed, someone yelled something and stray dogs howled. The bag looked nervously towards the closed drapes.

"Don't worry so much," said the hotdogs. "I come here to fuck all the time, no one's gonna mess with us."

The bag slipped off its' robe, exposing the lumps from the various meats that filled it.

"I like what I see," murmured the hot dogs as it rubbed its' nubby hotdog ends up and down the bag, letting splashes of warm brine slop over it. 

"I've never done this before," said the bag. 

"Don't worry, I'll be gentle." 

The hotdogs pushed one frankfurter out through a tear in the bottom of the sack and forced it deep inside the bag of warm flesh. It poked into part of a pork chop, then a chunk of stew beef. 

The bag wiggled and writhed, the sack pumped and groaned.

The heat was making the meat sour and the hotdogs ripen. The friction created more kinetic heat, and the smell thickened.

The sack yelped as the bag went limp and they both lay there: a sack of fetid hotdogs on top of a bag of spoiled meat, both oozing onto the floor.

"The Princess Special"

The cake was almost neon pink, somewhat incandescent and undoubtedly full of processed granular sugar. The man behind the counter smiled. 

"Is that the one you want?" He said, voice unnaturally chipper and, considering the subject matter, too enthused. "Most little girls like that one. We call it "The Princess Special"."

I paused. Technically I was here for my nephew's birthday cake, but maybe this is the cake he'd prefer. I barely know him. I barely like him. 

"What else do you have?" I said. 

"What does he like? Is he a sporty kid or a nerdy kid?" 

I had to think. 

"I don't know him much, really. He's a fat little pile of garbage. He has diabetes but my sister insists he has a normal cake. I just need a pile of baked sugar."

"We have sugar-free alternatives, if you'd prefer that?"

I didn't care enough to bother. I didn't like my sister, I didn't like her son, I didn't want to be in the generic cake section of the generic super market.

"Just give me "The Princess Special" and two dozen donuts," I said. 

I took the boxes and went to the check out. I passed by the deli meats and bought a pound of pruiscutto. I figured that he could eat that too. Maybe he could have a heart attack for his tenth birthday.

Happy birthday, princess.

"Sing A Little Song For Me"

"Which one?" I asked

"It doesn't matter, I don't know... Whatever you prefer," He muttered.

Outside I could hear kids playing, cars passing by, airplanes coming and going to places I'd probably never see.

"Have you made up your mind yet, goddamnit, we don't have all day," he growled impatiently. 

Inside was dark and dank. Stained carpet. Cockroaches eating the bedding, hatching in the sheets. Have you ever entered a room and wondered if someone had been pissing on the floor? This was one of those rooms. 

"Hurry it the fuck up, I've got a life to lead."

I pulled my legs up to my ears and began singing "Come Fly With Me".

He relaxed and we continued. 

Outside were people living lives; inside were cockroaches shitting on the carpet and eating the wallpaper.

"Fossils"

Outside it rained. Inside the radio played. A constant rhythm of 60's pop songs poured from the speakers and fell to the floor like beef through a grinder. 

"I'm going to work," He said, satchel thrown over his shoulder. 

Jefferson Airplane piled on top of The Animals.

She looked up from her coffee.

"Alright, have a good day."

The Everly Brother 

"Everywhere"

The popsicle melted down the front of her hands. Cold pink and orange seeped between her fingers and pattered silently onto her oversized floral dress. Her eyes wandered across the street to where a few children shrieked and chased each other.
Her tongue, a squat moth eaten protrusion, slowly drug itself upwards against the soft multicolored sludge she could barely contain within the industrial grade waffle cone gripped in her hands.







"How To Ride A Horse"

"The Insides"

The Lost Boy: A Eulogy For My Dad

“Don’t the sun look angry through the trees?” - Warren Zevon

My dad finally died which is something I’ve thought about for a long time. Not in an excited sense but in the wonder of “what happens then?” What happens when dad’s gone?

My dad was, at his level best, a bad uncle. He was like one of the relatives you’d be cautioned to avoid when extended family you didn’t normally see arrived for the holidays. Don’t get me wrong: he wasn’t the molesty uncle but the “let’s give the 13 year olds booze and weed” kind of uncle. I was 16 when my dad started giving us booze and weed, my younger brother would’ve been 13 or 14 then. For Christmas when I was 18 we each got a fifth of booze and our own personal flasks, you know, so we could drink on the go like we were beat cops about to retire in a 1970’s crime movie. 

My dad was always good if you needed to get fucked up or needed to borrow twenty bucks, or just needed a couch to pass out on. He always had weird people coming and going from his life who only ever had first names, weed or pills, and eventually disappeared as quickly as they arrived. Mostly they were fat, drunk guys like him but sometimes they were teenagers. He had a succession of teenage girls living with him on and off for several years. One brought in boys when he had to go out town when my grandmother died and he told me his guns had been stolen when that happened. Another teenage girl who lived with him was, as he was fond of repeating “a lesbian”, which was something I’d never bothered to confirm or deny. She eventually left and when she bumped into my wife a few years later said she had to cut ties with him because he’d call her constantly to verbally berate her. I never fully knew the details of his relationships with these kids and probably never will but it always felt off to me. I’ll leave it at that.

My dad notoriously burned a four unit apartment down by dumping a pile of congealed bacon fat he’d been saving into a skillet, cranking the heat up to max and walking away. Turns out spattering liquid animal fat in large quantities can catch fire, although I’d always wondered if this was the cause given his habit of passing out with lit cigarettes in his hands. Anyways, he grabbed his dog and jumped two stories off the balcony after inhaling burning soot and was intubated and sent to a burn ward out of the area for copious skin grafts. Just so I’m clear: he wasn’t supposed to be smoking in his apartment or keeping a dog. My dad wouldn’t be controlled by the rules of polite society, a lifelong rebel without a thought.

He had learning difficulties as a kid, suffering from severe dyslexia and color blindness. I have to wonder if he had mental health diagnoses that, had they been addressed, may have helped him in later life. 

The small Oregon town he grew up in was one of the beautiful to look at but hard to survive in places that populate the Oregon map. Lumber and mining was the bedrock of the economy and when those industries shut down my grandfather, a man who’s first name was the letters EB (not pronounced “ebb” but “eee bee” with neither letter standing in for any other name or designation), had a mental breakdown and was institutionalized when my dad was a boy. Eventually he came home but on a cocktail of heavy duty narcotics that kept him sedate and unable to work. He spent his remaining decades wandering in place and sucking down chewing tobacco when he wasn’t staring off into the middle distance. 

My grandmother was a kind woman but one without any real control of anything, let alone her brood. My father was the last of five children: the eldest, Ernest, was a “jailbird” and had been in prison since I’d been aware of him and presumably he died there; my aunt Shirley married a series of abusive men starting when she was 15, one of her suitors being the only friend my mentally deficient cousin Doug had ever made and having his mom running off in a sexual flurry with his buddy didn’t do him any favors; my uncle Delbert was the success story of the group with a barber shop and other business endeavors, he famously divorced his wife at the same time his cousin was divorcing his and somehow they ended up marrying each other ex’s (and they say true love is dead); my other uncle Larry was the slimeball of the lot, when he wasn’t stealing from everyone to feed his speedball habit (fyi, a speedball is when you shoot up a mixture of heroin and crank, in case you weren’t white trash enough to know) he was beating the shit out of his wives, the last time I saw him I remember thinking “I don’t think I ever want to see this man again”, and thankfully I haven’t. 

My dad was the last child of the family and in an economically depressed place with a tumultuous home life, difficulties at school, and whatever else he experienced that he took to the grave with him, it’s not a shock he resorted to getting fucked up as a kid. In that kind of environment substance abuse is two things simultaneously: an expected behavior and the only escape from the crushing boredom and depression. 

My dad took that attitude with him across state lines and into California where he met my mother and tried to remake himself. He was “sober”, at least in the sense that he said he was, and he became a Christian. He wore that mask as long as he could until he grew to resent it and left. My dad was the kind of man who would’ve been a born coal miner a 100 years ago, one in a gaggle of nameless workers going from dusky mines to taverns then to cots and back again until black lung would’ve taken him at the age of 41, but in the Reagan 80’s that wasn’t a thing on the west coast, so he tried to be an upstanding family man instead.

Ultimately, my dad’s biggest sin was being himself. He was a broken, beaten child that never grew up. I don’t know what the chip was on his shoulder but it was a big one and he carried it with him everywhere he went. He was angry, never fully knowing how to connect to people and forever caught between needing people and hating them for being needed. I don’t feel bad that he died or that I haven’t talked to him in years; he lived his life how he had to live it and I lived how I had to live mine. We had divergent paths, and the man he tried to be and failed at is the man I’ve strived to become. He’s left me with a lot of bitter memories, very little of them good, but he did leave behind a detailed roadmap of where not to go and what paths to avoid when the inevitable fork materializes in the path. He was like the mirror opposite of John Bunyan’s pilgrim in Pilgrims Progress: my dad was a conglomeration of all the characters who attempt to lead Pilgrim astray. He lives on as a reminder of what not to do and where to avoid going if you want to flourish.

I don’t have any actual pictures of him and truth be told I don’t really want them, but I do have an image of him that lives in my mind, a school picture of as a boy of maybe 9 or 10. I remember it because it was one of the only pictures of him as a boy I’d ever seen; stuff like color photography and Kodak cameras would’ve been an expensive commodity in tiny Riddle, Oregon in the 60’s and 70’s, a luxury that wouldn’t have been considered. As far as I’ve ever known my dad’s family didn’t keep a lot of pictures.

He had deep, weary eye bags for a child that belied an inherent exhaustion kids don’t normally have. I believe that picture stood out to me then because it would’ve been the only time I would’ve seen him as an innocent person, just a kid who’s worst sin at that time would’ve been cursing or stealing coins from my grandmas purse. I knew him as the giant, hulking and angry thing that yelled at my mom, punched holes in the walls and threw shit at us; The man who would come home just to scream then storm off and disappear; The man who made my brother and I pack up our clothes into garbage sacks and load up in the car so he could go “sell us into white slavery” because we didn’t clean our room fast enough; The man who insisted on driving me to school one morning when I was 13 just to tell me he was divorcing my mom then dump me out of the car without another word, my world destroyed and P.E. starting in 20 minutes. But at some point in his life, before all of that, he was just a little kid who needed someone or something to intervene and direct him forward, and he never found it.

At some point when I was in my mid-20’s we were sitting around drinking in my yard. For a brief time we found some semblance of camaraderie in alcoholism, and when we were together we were drinking. 

I don’t know what possessed him but he looked over at me and asked “I was a good dad, right?” I didn’t know how to answer, and I think I might’ve laughed. What kind of question is that? Why ask a question you don’t want an answer to? Are you joking?

I said something like “sure, dad, whatever”, and I guess that appeased him or at least gave him the ability to quiet the internal dialogue looping in his mind enough for the subject to change.

It’s weird having him gone now because we were estranged for so long that he became a non-person to me. After so many years of struggling with him he just became something I didn’t consider after I could finally loose myself of him, which was a source of relief at the time.

I don’t feel guilty about that but I do feel pity for him, I feel bad for that boy who had so much stacked against him and no one to help him grow into a functioning person and teach him how to be a parent or what it means to be a father. I think the core of my dad was that scared and exhausted child, and all the intervening years did was build up a grizzled man around that perpetual core.  

Some peoples lives are suffering and pain and my dad was one of those people. I may not have been able to when he was alive but I feel like I see him clearer now, although the image will always be muddy. We may not have talked these last several years but I hope he can find some peace, and I hope that his suffering and struggle is over. 

So, “what happens then?” I don’t really know. I expected some kind of revelation or understanding to wash over me but I’m left cold. I’m left with a sense of sadness for who he was way before I was born but not for the man he became. I’m left conflicted, and probably always will be.

That was my father, that was my dad as best as I can understand him. 

Rest in peace, dad. 

To Eric

This feels really weird, dude, because I have this strong sense that the episode will end and fade to black and then the next episode will start and you’ll be back, like nothing happened. Poof, no problem, back to normal. 

It’s hard in this moment because I feel like I need to say something but I don’t know what that is exactly. I guess I need to say goodbye to you.

I feel guilt because we haven’t seen you much the last few years since we had kids. All day barbecues, all day beer drinking, and late nights babbling about esoteric stuff over absinthe are pretty impossible when you gotta be up at 4am and juggle work, karate, doctors appointments and so on. I know it’s all excuses now that you’re gone and there’s no going forward with you in the picture but it’s the truth.

Again, it feels weird. 

I look at your pictures, watch that video of Kurt talking at you, and you’re alive again. You’re not dead. New episode, it’s all back to normal. 

At your funeral I kept thinking people there were you because, and let’s be honest, most of us were white guys with beer bellies and facial hair in baseball caps. Still, I kept looking up and briefly catching you before realizing it was someone else. 

I also forgot how much your dad sounds like you, or I probably should say that you sounded like your dad. As a father myself I can only imagine his loss in a way that taps into my most primal fears. 

I lost a friend and the ability to make a proper reconnection when the time was right, but your dad and your family lost a son and a brother. Honestly I’m surprised your dad did so well today because I put myself in his shoes and I don’t think I’d have been nearly as composed. 

I’m sorry we’ve been unintentionally distant the last few years. Hindsight is awful. 

I hope that if there’s something else or anything after this that you’ve ended up someplace you’d want to be. I know that at some point after 40 beers we’ve discussed this kind of thing, probably several times, but I can’t remember specifics. 

There’s no easy way to leave this world and there’s no easy way to end this kind of thing so I’ll leave it at that.

I miss you, dude. We all do. 

Film Review: “Godzilla vs. Kong” (2021)

 4 1/2 out of 5

I fucking love monsters, especially big monsters. I don’t know why but I always have, ever since I was little. Monsters of one sort or another have existed on the periphery of my consciousness for my whole life. I was just at the coast and while taking in one beautiful rocky vista all I could imagine was a giant crab crawling up from the depths. That’s just who I am. 

So I’m the target audience here. I could be critical but I’m an easy lay for this, and unlike the prior two Godzilla films that think we want human characters and human drama (we don’t, by the way) this gives us big monsters doing big monster stuff in places that are silly. It’s the best of these Monsterverse movies second only to Kongs first outing in Skull Island and much better than the prior Godzilla films. 

It’s hard to imagine the ground level serious Godzilla of 2014 being connected to all this soft science fiction silliness (hollow earth flying snake monster reverse gravity gobbledygook) but it’s a monumental improvement. If you thought the family drama of King of The Monsters was lame you’ll love the simplistic characters here. Most importantly if you love the monsters you’ll enjoy this. 

Godzilla is mostly cast as an antagonist but Kong is expressive and strangely relatable; alternately exhausted and driven. As a father of three I felt every time he flopped down with the look of “do I really have to keep doing this?” on his face. They did a great job giving the monsters personality. 

I get why some people will balk at this and if you do then go watch fucking Nomadland and pat yourself on the back. I don’t know why you’d watch this if this is the kind of movie you know you don’t like. I like big monsters. I like this movie. 

If you like big monsters you’ll like it too.

A Eulogy For Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh, or El Rushbo (English translation: “The Rushed Beau”) as he preferred his followers to refer to him as, died and went to Hell this morning with only his beloved humidor of cigars and his tolerated pomeranian Poopsy by his side. A temperamental man of few words repeated many ways, Rush saw himself as an underdog of American Exceptionalism in a time when American Exceptionalism was the standard. Always willing to fight even when there was no fight to be found Rush would make a point of arguing with any inanimate object he found objectionable, up to and including garbage bins, the bread selection of his neighborhood Kroger’s, the wooden Indian outside of his cigar shop, and most notably with a half eaten Big Mac he’d forgotten about on his broadcast desk (“I’ve been infiltrated by feminazi scum! Who do you think you are, you lipstick besmirched chowderhead?!??”). He had many enemies during his tenure as America’s favorite radio blowhard but counted a select few as confidantes. He was known to golf with exiled Cobra leader Cobra Commander, was once spotted giving advice to Ming The Merciless, and most recently was “the devil” on President Donald Trumps shoulder. He leaves a divided legacy, remembered as a terrible father, an inept lover (12th wife Sharon Sharons was quoted saying “Rush called love making a ‘grunt n’ dump’ and it was as passionate as it sounds”), but also as a tender defender of every bad idea the GOP could concoct. He’s survived by his humidor, his second humidor at his studio, and his third humidor at his Boca Raton retreat El Rato Rushbo, as well as his legion of loyal morons The Dittoheads who now, having neither the guidance of Trump or Rush, are experiencing an existential panic and have begun fleeing into the surrounding woods and forests to disappear into the shadows. In accordance with his last wishes his body will be cast in bronze and sunk to the bottom of Loch Ness where he hopes to prove that not only Nessie is a secret hedonistic lesbian but also that this is the location where the corrupt Democratic Party had hidden the Dominion servers that prove Trump won the 2020 election. He also wished to have a plaque bearing his name and a quote, “Daddy would like some sausage?”, left near the shoreline.

In lieu of flowers the staff of his EIB studios is requesting that bags of dog and/or human shit be sent to President Joe Biden 

Goodbye, All The Best Video

I’ve spent the last few years audibly being thankful that in the modern age my mid-sized college town still had a video store, one that was founded the year before I was born, and had survived big box renters like Blockbuster and Hollywood Video and the proliferation of streaming services like Netflix. But 2020 had one last punch to throw and it landed squarely on the temple of my beloved video store, All The Best. 

I feel silly admitting how hard this is impacting me. I see myself going through the grieving process in the expected steps: I feel guilt for not renting more than I did and not racking up heftier late fees than I could’ve, and I’ve begun concocting hairbrained schemes to keep it afloat. Eventually I’ll accept it but I’m already planning on avoiding the street it’s on because the thought of seeing the building shuttered and the purple awning removed genuinely makes me want to sob. 

I can imagine most people will think my reaction is ridiculous. The majority of video stores closed within the last decade and the mass public abandoned physical media almost as long ago. It’s the vestigial tail of an animal that evolved some time ago, I get that. I also get that in an era where you have thousands of hours of tv and movies that are pumped directly to your phone the idea of driving to a building to wander aisles to select something to watch seems an absurd act. 

For me going to the video store was more than just watching a movie; it was an experience and a connection to like minded people. Growing up in the country in a conservative religious family I found culture and saw the world through the movies I found at our local video store. That’s a quaint idea now and I can’t imagine what it must be like growing up with everything ever being available at your fingertips, but in the 80’s and 90’s it was an oasis in a desert, and without it I could’ve easily been a different person. 

Beyond that it was a way to share a part of my childhood with my own children. Going to the video store meant they’d get to pick a movie and some candy and popcorn, maybe buy a used movie or two. I rarely faced a weekend as a kid without renting a 5-for-5 (5 movies for 5 days) and although I think they mostly enjoyed the candy I tried my damndest to give them some of that. 

Times change, I guess, and old ways die. I’m only thirty five but I feel like an old man watching the culture I’ve held dear alter into something unfamiliar and unappealing, as overly dramatic as that sounds. 

I don’t know if I’ll be leaving the area any time soon but I do know that should I ever transplant my family somewhere else one of the first requirements right after good schools and safe neighborhoods is “is there a local video store still?”

All The Best you were the best. Your employees were friendly and helpful and most importantly they liked and knew movies. Your selection was great. You had the popcorn tubs I loved that doubled as a way to carry out my movies and snacks. Most importantly you were a human way of doing things and the sterility of a streaming algorithm will always be a poor substitute to your tangible, tactile humanity. From the bottom of my heart I say thank you for everything you’ve done for our community and for all of us who habitually occupied your aisles. I’ll never wear my Leprechaun shirt in a place where it will be properly appreciated ever again.

I desperately hope there’s an 11th hour reprieve but should we not get the PG-13 ending where the spunky teens of the youth center save the video store then know that your memory will live on in our hearts.