So there I was, stumbling through airports, trying to make various connecting flights to Hilo, Hawaii. There, supposedly, my quarry awaited me—a missing person who went by the name of Wendell. And there was a big payroll to be had if I could find him. But first I had to get there.
I was extremely, extremely hungry. Aside from airline peanuts and such, I’d eaten exactly once—in Vegas. I think. It’s all a blur. All I remember is lukewarm Burger King patties, plain, glopped with ketchup, just the way I like ‘em. (Well, I could’ve done without the lukewarm part.) I carried them over to the neighboring bar, where the fat but cheerful but stupid bartender—like a friendly but insensitive former linebacker in a stereotypical TV type way—was. (Though he was way too short to be a linebacker.)
Sorta like reminiscent of Dawber from Coach, except he was shorter and had a rounder face and body. He also had darker, thicker hair. It was all poofed up and gelled or moussed or something. Sorta like an evening news guy or a used car salesman. Oh yeah, and his complexion was somewhere between muddy and ruddy, and he was actually wearing one of those ugly red vests that bartenders wear in the movies sometimes.
But wait, back to that Dawber comparison for jussa second. ‘Member how even tho’ Dawber had a Cro-Magnon type brow, he also had squinty little non-eyes, (which were actually a little creepy when you look back on it, ‘cuz they were so empty and fathomless,) and how Dawber also has a fine little girl nose and skinny little lips? Huh? Do ya?
Don’t tryta front like you didn’t ever watch Coach. Probably on some late insomniac night when the shit was in syndication, and you’d seen all the movies on Porn Per-View and also on HBO’s 1-15, where you’d also already seen all the episodes of the “more respectable” Sopranos, (being as they only make, like, 1 per geologic era. Like in the last one, Tony Soprano was one of those fish from 500 million years ago that they thought was extinct, but then somebody just found one swimmin’ around in the pond in their backyard or something recently. And how on the episode before that he was a trilobite. And some episode way back there Big Pussy was under water ‘cuz that’s where life began. Underwater. And Pussy is the Giver of Life. And then he was a fish, I think, but he could talk. Sorta like that singing fish everybody had hangin’ on her/his wall for a while.)
(And but you know you only watch The Sopranos ‘cuz you wanna whack off over that tone-deaf skank Meadow. But haha you’re pathetic! I might actually get ta boink her pretty soon when I get paid for this missing persons case. Y’know, like I’ll take it out in trade.) And so you were stuck watchin’ Coach, ‘cuz to not watch something would’ve left you up late, alone and looking into the void yr. life has become. Huh? ‘Member that?
Well, the reason I ask is because this bartender had larger, rounder features than Dawber, and had better breath than I imagine Dawber havin’ too for some reason. P.S., ever notice that Dawber is Mindy from Mork & Mindy’s last name? Well, I mean the actress who played Mindy, Pam Dawber—who’s hardly seen these days. I wonder why, given the magnificent, ever-broadening vistas of former star reality TV show humiliation. Pam oughta be amassing wealth and face time—as they say in “The Business”—if not dignity.
Ah well, if I were an agent, I’d try to be the best agent I could be for god, (or however that thing goes—the poem, I mean, not that song,) even if my clients were Dawber & Dawber, and hey! There’s my first brilliant idea as an agent: Dawber & Dawber? Meet Dawber & Dawber!!!! You guessed it, the reality buddy show w/ Pam and, uh, Dawber—don’t know that fucker’s real name, though he was in the made-for-TV movie of The Stand.I watched that piece of shit adaptation once w/ this beloved female acquaintance of mine. She said she kept expecting Craig T. Nelson to pop out from behind some of the scenery and shriek: "Dawber! What the hell are you doing here in Nebraska? We've got a game in 2 days!!!!"
And then Dawber would kick the dirt sheepishly and say, "Gosh, Coach, I forgot!" And Craig T. Nelson would indignantly scream, "You forgot!!!!???!!" And he'd drag Dawber all the way back to Minneapolis, which, although devastated by the Superflu, is the home of the Screaming Eagles or whatever they were called. And where Jerry Van Dyke is waitin’ to plant a “welcome home” kiss on ‘em both w/ those big, wet, meaty lipsa his.
But that adaptation of The Stand. Boy did that suck, but then not as much as it might’ve, given the bloated sucky, (but nowhere near as sucky as this piece of shit made-for-TV adaptation) source material. The first part of the book, with the plague, is way more frightening, compelling, etc. than anything that comes in the later sections. (I mean, frightening & compelling for a Steven King book, which is to say only somewhat, at best.) And it’s not just the collapse of society or the grisly physical visions, both pre- and post- societal breakdown—it’s those nightmares everyone has in which something evil is stalking ‘em in a distressingly familiar, personal—to him or her type—way.
So like, Steve-O (as any true fan of that guy’s work knows he likes to be called) has dangled both anti-Christ and Armageddon in front of you, but guess what???? As soon as the ol’ Imp's base of operations is set up, he immediately loses his power for no apparent reason, and the entirely passive, voyeuristic good guys watch ol’ J-Hove give him a nuclear bitch-slapping (literally) that eliminates his map, as literary stunt man DF Wallace likes to say in his sprawling but deeply flawed but not quite sucky opus Infinite Jest.
And well, the expression’s pretty apt here, since Las Vegas gets blown off the map in the bitch-slappin’ process, and good and bad guys get blown away w/ it, cuz like I hear that god works in strange and inexplicable ways. And I think god oughta write mystery novels—you’d never know what was gonna happen. 'Course, strange and inex-whatever aside, god’s like the best at everything, I guess, so I reckon whatever she/it/he/we/they/you (both singular and plural)/thou wanted to write would be the most effective piece of literature of its kind that anyone would ever read—better than the real thing, no doubt.
Which is why I hope god gets right on both porn and self-help books at the same time, cuz I really like depersonalized sex and achieving my maximum potential and happiness and like that. (And isn’t that what god’s supposed to want you to do?)
And I’ll even be her/his/their agent if he/she/it/etc. wants, ‘cuz remember how I said I wanna be a good agent for god? Well, what better way to do so then to be god’s agent? (Not in a religious capacity, but more in terms of A&R.) And as an agent, I can think of some pretty good ways to move god’s products.
And please allow me to digress here, but I’d really like to say that I’m glad said nuclear spankdown of Vegas didn’t happen during my layovers (both to and from Hawaii) in that fine Amsterdam-cum-Disney Land heckuva place cuz it woulda sucked to get my map eliminated like that
So. But. Back to the matter at hand, which is… The Stand!!! That’s right! Almost lost it in there somewhere. Aside from all its other failings, (choosing just one at random—why does every single character in Steve-O’s books talk and, apparently, (as they all do so in a running monologue sorta way) think exactly the same way? (Regardless of variations in race, age, social class, gender, height, politics, and just plain ol’ individual weirdness.) A way that I’m guessing is similar, to the way that Steve-O himself thinks.
Could get at least one PhD dissertation outta this question, but I don’t have time, since I have to get back to The Stand, and eventually, Thing-Fish, as well as my trip to Hawaii.
Well aside from that and forgetting the annoying passivity of most of the book’s characters… (And like is anyone who lives on the west coast good, & do they get summoned eastward? ‘Cuz it seems like that would screw up the binary logic of the book…)
Well, OK, we’ll forget all those failings plus the one’s we’re not mentioning. Back to how easy it is to defeat Satan: To paraphrase The X-Files’ Fox Mulder in the very enjoyable second season episode Die Hand die Verletzt, Did Steve-O think he could conjure up his reader’s expectations of the devil and then expect them to not be pissed off when he gives ‘em some immediately bitchslappable Walkin’ Dude? (I walk a lot. What’s so scary about that?) Well, I guess he was right to not worry, cause the book continues to sell oodles of copies around the world. But maybe once word-of mouth kicks in, (c’mon, sometimes it takes a while,) you’ll see there are a lotta people like me who feel the book is a rip-off. (Hey! I know you’re out there somewhere! Hello?) And then his sales’ll drop & I’ll be vindicated.
And maybe monkeys will fly outta my butt…
OK. So enough about The Stand. Like Russell Banks or Liz Phair, (but not that utterly foxy, if egomaniacal Liz Elmore—Liz, if you’re reading this, call me, please. I’m begging,) it makes me kinda queasy to even talk about it.
But so where were we? Oh yeah! Dawber & Dawber!!! Well, like it could be a reality buddy show, in which we alternate who humiliates whom each week. Like there’d be this one where Pam Dawber dresses up as a dominatrix. Then she ties Dawber down and does what Dr. Benway of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch does did to one of his young “subjects”: she performs a regiment of Pavlovian-Skinnerian emotional conditioning on him…
(And by “Skinnerian,” I don’t mean A.D. Skinner from The X-Files. He’s pretty cool, and if it’s not too late, I really think they oughta give him a spin-off, where, like he’s quit the FBI because his brother, an undercover NYPD detective, gets killed by Colombian gangstas, and now he’s frustrated by the distance between Bureau operations and the day-to-day criminal monstrosities that are devouring the average Joe or Jo on the street.
And when special guest star David Duchovny shows up in the first episode, Skinner asks him why he’s chasing UFOs, which even if you believe in ‘em, only really affect, like, 0.0000000000000000000001347% of the world population. And Mulder yells a lot (cause that’s how people on The X-Files show they are acting) about some abstract shit re: The Truth.
And Skinner says, no Mulder, The Truth isn’t out there Mulder, it’s up my ass, wanna look? (Cause isn’t Skinner always telling people to do something with their and/or his ass(es)?) And Mulder says, sure, let me look, and then he pulls out one of those big, impossibly bright flashlights he and Scully used to flash all over in the dark, making for, like, really cool visual effects. (Not unlike the ones at yr. local planetarium’s Pink Floyd Lazer Light show). And then he not only shoves that prodigious flashlight up Skinner’s ass, but also begins climbing into his ass after it.
(Oh wait, Skinner was wearing pants, probably, but let’s just assume that either he or Mulder quickly removed them and his tightie whities too. ‘Cuz as any loyal fan of The X-Files knows Skinner wears tightie whities, unlike Speedo fetishist Mulder. (God help us if Duchovny reprises that Speedo thing nowadays when he’s a bit more, uh, filled out.)
So anyway, Skinner says uhuhuhuh ogod and farts. And Mulder disappears. He’s been abducted by Skinner’s ass!!!! And the screen says TO BE CONTINUED.And we can only hope that the next episode will get the actual show (I mean the Skinner show) moving forward, (at least a little,) but also answer the question of what happened to Mulder. Except for that of course it won’t because X-Files creator and hair feathering revivalist Chris Carter hates to resolve anything that fast. Or ever. Still, we gotta do things sorta his way, as he's the presumable exec prod of this new show, which, by the way, is gonna be called Skinner, at least in the pitch that I will present to the Fox Network.
And I’m gonna definitely include that last scene in my pitch, because it’s not only visual, but visceral, and that’s exactly how I’m gonna put it to them: “visual but visceral.”
And then they will give me a billion dollars and I’ll give a little to charity and a lot to Uncle Sam, but mostly I’ll just quit being a P.I. and instead smoke lots and lots of doobie (do the kids call it that anymore? I’m hip, you know) and eat ice cream. Except I’m lactose intolerant so it’ll have to be rice cream (or maybe lice cream, if such a thing exists). And I can’t smoke Mary Jane, (I bet that’s what the kids call it now,) because it induces psychotic paranoia in me. So I guess I’ll just chew really good gum and eat rice cream. Maybe on a beach.
But we can only hope that the second epi of Skinner will get a little farther into setting up the story of the show. ‘Cause, I mean, come on, that Mulder ass-spelunking thing, while cool, is really kind of a digression, and viewers don’t really like digressions. And by that rationale, maybe I should take it out of my pitch after all. But I’ll leave it in the script, and I still plan to use that “visual and visceral” line to refer to something else in the script, ‘cuz it sounds really smart and euphonic.
Anyway, Skinner quits the FBI and sets up his own crack team of private eyes, (like me, which I hope will get me an ongoing special consultant credit,) (and maybe a recurring guest part too). And they go around righting everyday wrongs like Colombian gangstas with drugs and white-collar corporate crime. Except you can’t really do white collar crime on TV because networks, and governments and things are all for this white collar hocus pocus spunk (huhhuh spunk). (Plus it’s boring.)
But maybe they could start an animal shelter and a soup kitchen and a mission in Ethiopia or Gary, Indiana and make the world better like that except while still being P.I.’s, because I want my credit, and it’ll allow for more suspense and action. But they’re like P.I.’s with hearts, (also like me,) sort of like Mother Theresa with a .44 or Gandhi with a machete or MLK with a water balloon or Richard Dawson with a mithryl battle-axe.
Anyway, so I’m not talking about that Skinner, but rather asshole Skinnerian behavioralist psychiatrist BF Skinner. (Which may, in case you’re wondering, very well stand for Butt Fuck or Butt Fucker. Ida know because I’m too lazy and filled with contempt for that particular bungsnotlicker to look it up. You go do it if you care so much. Me? I’m gonna go watch some euro-porn. It’s so chic and dirty. Yumyumyummmmm.)
But so um, where were we? Oh yeah… Dawber & Dawber!!!! So, like Dr. Benway, Pam Dawber conditions the subject (here, Dawber) to shit at the sight of her. Then she washes him off and fucks him up the ass. And it is, as Doc Benway suggests, "real tasty."
But so how is Pam Dawber fucking Dawber up the ass? I’m glad you asked that question. Pam Dawber, I am authorized to reveal, is a fully functional hermaphrodite. So she’s gotta dick and a pussy, but they’re not arrayed in such a way that she can fuck herself, sadly, unlike Ben Stiller who supposedly has a cunt in the palm of his left hand. (It’s a birth defect, though it doesn’t sound like one to me.) And he fucks himself all the time. Kinda like masturbation, but better for everyone involved.
(Adam Sandler, by the way, is a fully functional male, but with a long, prehensile tail, like a monkey's, that he hides under his clothes. And he’s gotten so smooth with it that he can fuck himself up the ass within his clothes while talking to you, and you won’t even know because it’ll just look like he’s making one of those stupid faces he makes—like especially that one where he opens his mouth really wide and stares at you in a way that you imagine a walleye might open its mouth really wide and stare at you, Which is not so much funny, but more like gross and vaguely creepy. Like that singing fish wasn’t really funny, but grosser and kinda creepy. Except the singing fish really was funny.)
So Pam Dawber conditions Dawber to do this, and then the really humiliating part happens. She takes him to Grant Park, (because I live in Chicago and am sick of every big crowd scene occurring in Times Square,) and he’s like blindfolded the whole time, so he can’t see her and shit. She takes him to Grant Park that way and unties the blindfold, and Dawber shits at the sight of her, and she washes him off and then fucks up the ass. And it’s "real tasty." And around 100 people watch. (It woulda been more in Times Square, probably, but who cares?) And that’s the really humiliating part.
But don’t feel too bad for Dawber, cause maybe that’s what he’s into. Don’t go projecting your prudish sexuality onto him. And besides, he’ll get Pam back next week when he makes her wear a stupid spaceman helmet and a red boiler suit with silver gloves and boots and a silver triangle on the front, and say nanoo nanoo to everyone she passes on the street. Now that’s humiliating.Well, so my point is that the bartender looked vaguely, but not exactly like Dawber. (I refer the lazy, inattentive reader to the differences I described above.) And he was trying to get people to get shots with their beer for only $2 extra. (Holy fuck! Airport food may be overpriced, but airport liquor??? That’s a deal? I mean, when one glass of domestic beer already ran you, like, $9 ferchrissake!!??!?!?!)
And he was esp. trying to get this sort of pretty girl who walked into the bar to get the shot for free, but she didn’t want it and besides she was with a guy, who seemed to be taking the whole thing in stride, and you could understand why, because only the most burntout alcoholic chicks would’ve taken the shot if it meant even talking to this pig for 1 more instant. He was pathetic.
But now I’m being a bastard, as much to pigs as to the guy. (Whatever that means.) So I guess I’ll shut my crass, bastardly mouth.
Next time, it’s back to my aerial odyssey. I’ll mesmerize you with my recollections of the flights themselves—particularly memories of my fellow passengers who ranged from boring to quirky to possibly psychotic. On we go!
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