Gemini, Siren, and Mr. T walk gingerly around the abandoned mining town of Erie, Pennsylvania. not a soul remains in the city outskirts or inskirts.
Siren smiling her big smile: this place is creepy as fuck. you wanted to date me here?
Gemini: this was the only time i had away from my wife. and this place IS where we're scheduled as Gladiators to perform.
Siren: where are your kids?
Mr. T: i'm babysitting them. this is the perfect place to go on Halloween, all i see are ghosts of a once-thriving lower-class community.
Gemini: i bet all the villagers are packed into that gym over there. to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the very first American Gladiators competition, which was really just an arm-wrestling display by Dann Carr. and the Assault game with the tennis ball on a string attached to the ceiling.
sure enough they were.
Dann Carr is about to get into a MESSY ONE-SIDED FIGHT with Johnny C. Ferraro. the suits can't keep Johnny's suit from getting wrinkled. Dann is blazoned in his gold-sequin wrestling unitard with bells on the belt looking very throwback WWF. Dann's biceps are so huge they touch the gym ceiling.
Gemini: dudes, not even I can keep this beatdown from getting ugly. this won't be a Tech knockout, this will be REAL. you two have got to COMMUNICATE. we don't want Johnny to end up a small bloody puddle with good hair in the corner.
Johnny: it's not JoJo anime hair, it's Vegas Wayne Newton hair...
Dann Carr: THIS BITCH STOLE MY IDEA FOR AMERICAN GLADIATORS!!!
Johnny: i know i did!!!.........it took me 40 years to finally admit this but of COURSE i stole your idea!!! but don't you see how the operation worked? i was the slick glitz and glamour and Hollywood connections, you were the dumb muscle. you see why we never talked for 40 years? you aren't exactly the EASIEST person to apologize to. he's gonna put an Indian curse on me!!! you don't want to get a man THIS mammoth angry...
Mr. T: come on, you guys kiss and make up, it's been TOO long, we don't live forever.
Siren: regret is worse than death. holding a grudge is not manly.
Johnny's perfect hair is mussed up as he's on his knees.
Johnny: i beg of you, don't turn me into pulp with your middle finger.
Dann: fine, i won't poke an eye out.
Johnny gets up and extends his business-suit cufflinked copper-buttoned hand. Dan slowly extends his arm which is the size of the Santa Monica Freeway.
at the last second Dann grabs Johnny's hand, balls his fingers into a fist, swings Johnny on his back, gives him an Indian burn, rubs his back, and beats Johnny in arm wrestling.
the room laughs.
Gemini: hehe, okay Johnny deserved that, right folks? you two friends again?
Dann: only if Johnny gives me my FAIR SHARE of the Gladiators stock. half. PAY ME. i don't give a FUCK if i signed the contract or the wrong contract or the trick contract or no contract at all.
Johnny: fine. what's that come to?
Dann: 500 trillion dollars...
Gemini: i know all about these working-class towns, all these small towns are havens for white trash. i feel your pain. i relate to you. i'm your mirror-opposite. but when we come together we can heal from this life.
Chris Matthews: he's right, listen to this man Gemini. you know the first American Gladiators mini-game should have been climbing the rope in gym class but the rope is greased with one whole can of my father's shaving cream.
Ear Horn: Halloween of course is a sacred holiday for us goths. we never eat the candy, the candy is holy to us, we BLESS the candy.
Eye Luggage: mother would you explain the ceremony to our non-goth non-pale friends?
Ear: certainly. it's through my butthole. the Tootsie Rolls are especially painful.........at first but then they become pleasurable...
Richard Moll: wait a minute, isn't the new season of Night Court supposed to start this week?...
at Pic-N-Save.
Gemini: i ate a big bowl of spaghetti with Angus chili, no beans. I FARTED LIKE A FATHERFUCKER, I FARTED UP A STORM at church. but why, ma'am? i ate no beans, only meat.
Ear Horn: you see, dearie, this is what happens when you don't eat your vegetables...
Mardith: i had to go to the Neon Church to pick up the only copy of The Woman's Bible left on Earth.
Jean Harlow: tits never go out of style...
Fuerza: wait the only thing this country can do about gun violence is lower their flags half-mast?...
Sasha Grey: this will be the first Halloween where i will JOYFULLY not celebrate. i am making sure the porch light is OFF and the jack-o'-lanterns are carved INSIDE and keeping the bowl of semi-sweet candy TO MYSELF on Oct. 31.
Julie Patzwald: wait i gotta make a call.
Eye Luggage: you're calling my mom not with a phone but with telepathy?
Julie: hi Ear Horn, playing that Disney Lorcana card game is not TECHNICALLY black magic, right?...
Ear Horn: no, dearie, but it'll get you addicted like crack cocaine...
Brrrski: it's not cold until it's BRRRSKI.
at the only sports bar in town packed like sardines cos the ENTIRE town is inside it. a sports bar that is spooky all year round.
Siren: why you sweating? your brow is a waterfall.
Gemini: it's just.........if something doesn't happen in the baseball game we're watching.........this date is gonna be a disaster. wait i gotta make a call.
Gemini: why in every bar there's a very narrow corridor under a red light with the one quarter-payphone graffiti'd like a motherfucker? is this the only way to make a saloon call? hello?
Ear: yes dearie? what are you doing? you're huffing and puffing. how's the date going? i love that i'm your wingman.
Gemini: we're watching the World Series on the tiny TV at the bar above the keep. if a player doesn't steal second base i won't GET to Second Base. cos i'm broke and we can't eat.
Ear: calm down, big man, she doesn't like you for your money, she likes you for your muscles. and your dimples. remember what i said the previous times.
Gemini returns in time to watch Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies steal second. the crowd erupts, starts in on Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline," and Gemini's heart sings.
Siren: well whaddya know. you know i despised that Kyle Schwarber guy, he's too meathead frat-guy for my taste. Kyle Schwarber ruined shawarma for the rest of us.
Chris Matthews: your statement is in the process of making me cry...
Siren: but i guess he came through.
Dann Carr: this forever alters my perception of Taco Bell. up until now Taco Bell brought back Vietnam flashbacks of seeing my daughter working the drive-thru window at the Vegas Taco Bell which painfully reminded me i wasn't a good-enough provider father. and then me wanting to go to the Las Vegas Hilton to confront Johnny Ferraro and punch his lights out to death in the lobby...
pregnant sea lion in Cannery Row: have you heard of sweater otters? cos those are my tits now...
Ear Horn: my Cornish Rex Julius is a very smart cat...
Julius: i speak nine languages, all the variances of the Queen Mum's English EXCEPT the one in Cornwall. i've translated Shakespeare into Sagwa's Siam Chinese, the only cat to do so.
Sagwa the Chinese Siamese cat: i especially enjoyed your Medieval Welsh transliteration, that's how i learned English. that and Friends...
Fuerza: Mick, Keith, you're 80 years old apiece and spry as spring chickens!!! how do you guys do it?!!!
Mick Jagger: clean living.
Keith Richards: i think you mean hard living.
Fuerza: i know your secret but i ain't telling. it's not your diet, it's your spirit...
Waszp: Australian WASPs can't sail it. Zealand WASPs okay.
Jacinda Ardern: ...
Bullhead City: where BulbHead products are manufactured.........again after the inflation and blocked shipping waterlanes...
Boc: you know it's the cold, you know it's the icy hale wind, when two birds are dancing drunk on the stone steps and slide off the stone stairs cos they can't fly no more. and a baker gets up REAL early to tag the STOP sign by the bakery with something clever under the word STOP to start a movement revolution.
humbucker: you'll get a hummer, you'll get your dick sucked, if you play the electric guitar. just ask David Foster Wallace.
David Foster Wallace: this is true. or write or play tennis.
Trinity: this ain't kitty litter, this is Quaker Oats...
Siren: Gemini, i had to move away from home at age 9 cos my parents didn't understand me. my mom hit me and my dad drank me under the table. a broken home can never be overcome. it lingers in you forever. i've had a hard life to reach here and be here today.
Gemini: okay but FREE TACOS!!! we got free tacos, boo. free tacos from Taco Bell.
Siren: i mean it's just the ONE free taco. i'm a BIG GIRL, i gotta FUCKING EAT, you know?!!!
Gemini: and don't worry, these tacos will give us our VEGETABLES. the lettuce and the tomatoes and the sour cream which is a kind of vegetable paste.
Mr. T: i ate ALL the Halloween candy on our neighborhood block. sorry.
2 comments:
I bet it’s quite eerie in Erie. Perhaps the haunting sound of old miners calls from below ground, echoing around the chasms. If you see any ghouls, in skirts, be sure to bow down to them, though they were the gladiators of old. Chip, chipping away with a metal drill and a hammer, hundreds of feet below in Hades veins. Some of them may be holding grudges, but not the type you may be thinking about. You see, a grudge is a small yet vicious creature that chants Indian curses and defecates tootsie rolls. They are especially nasty during the Hallows Festival using telepathic black magic to mess with your head and make you permanently BRRRSKI. They are from the old Cornish mines and know how to speak Cornish Pasty.
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everywhere i go i see chasms, my sweet, where high schools used to be, in my head. all the girl ghouls i see are wearing Catholic-school plaid skirts, i can relate, those were strict times with the nuns. Hades got clean, his veins are pink again, he's only addicted to cocaine, not crack. i hope the Grudge that comes after me is a Japanese girl with long straight black raven hair, i can relate to her with Poe poetry. or an Indian Spirit Walk, i need one of those right about now.
the best black magic is the black magic in Handball.
mah dahlin i want to eat your Cornish pasties off!!! then after the sex, whilst we're in the afterglow of sex, we'll dine on Cornish pastries with our Cornish Rex cat Julius who gets jealous.
love you
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