Kung Fu Ninjas and Werewolf Zombies Fight All Night

Pittsburgh (AP) — Authorities called to the scene and witnesses' accounts have described it as an amateur video shoot gone wrong. At least one middle school student, Alvin Ayes, is in critical condition at Heritage Valley Hospital. Early reports indicate that two or three other students may have been involved in the incident. Their identities and medical statuses are unknown at this time.

---

"Jimmy, just put on the mask."

Jimmy Kent did not want to put on the horse head mask. For one, it was 34 degrees, and humid. For another, it was a stupid idea.

As written -- in the back pages of Jimmy's Trapper Keeper during third period math the previous Friday -- the scene involved two hoods: Jimmy, and Ritchie Kent, with whom Jimmy shared a surname and an eighth-grade classroom but little else. The duo would mug an old man. They were supposed to be a pair of opportunistic juvenile delinquents. They came across a drunk while cutting class, stole his wallet and whiskey flask, then got lit and spent the little money they absconded on arcade games and hamburgers before being caught in a standoff with police. The last shot was supposed to be an homage to Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid.

But now with Colin and the goddamn horse head mask.

"There's no reason for it, Colin," Jimmy protested. "Why the hell would I be wearing a horse head mask?"

"Um, because I said you are," Colin Moss answered. "If you don't want to be in the movie, go back home and watch TV and jerk off, loser."

"It's my script," Jimmy said. His voice had lost its timbre.

"Says who? Get a lawyer, loser. I have all the equipment. You're fired. Get out of here. Hey, Alvin! Want to be a star?"

Alvin Ayes wanted very much to be a star.

---

@moviesfordudeswholikemovies: still going ahead with the film altho one of the roles was recasted. Stay tuned for more nwes crewpies

@moviesfordudeswholikemovies: Excellent news! @Alvinaction01 is stepping up! This guy has WHAT IT TAKES

---

Flat and oblong. Perfectly smooth. This was the one. It had to be. Alvin hefted the rock in his hand. He had seen his uncle do twelve skips. His own personal record was eight. He was confident that he could break both with this rock. He backpedaled a few paces, planted his feet into the sand, and started running.

He stopped himself just as he reached shore, reeling to keep balance. The rock could perhaps skip a hundred times, or two hundred. But Alvin didn't want to lose such a precious stone to the bottom of Glendale Lake.

He put it in his swim trunks pocket and walked back to the high ground, where someone was playing acoustic guitar and people were laughing.

---

"I just can't get my head around it, Rich. You're failing French. Your mother speaks French! She was born in Marseille! Are you retarded or just stupid?"

"Maybe I'm both?"

That elicited a swat from Paul Kent. To Senator Kent -- who wasn't a real senator but who ruled the house -- a "swat" was defined as not being as hard as a punch but not as weak as a slap.

"Go finish your fucking homework."

Ritchie wanted to respond that he already had, but he didn't want to press his luck. No Whammies.

---

Colin Moss gathered the cast and crew "Okay, everyone, day two! We're going to make it through this! But I need you all to keep a strong composure. Today isn't going to be easy. We are all going to have to make sacrifices to see that this thing comes to life."

"I've rewritten the first scene. Alvin, you're playing the drunk. Ritchie, you and me are the hoods. Instead of mugging the drunk, we're going to strangle him then get shot by the cops. We just don't have the time to stretch out the story. Jimmy's script was full of shit like what the sun looked like shining off the bodies of ants."

---

"Hey, you old drunk man! Got any money? If you do, give it to me now!"

"I have money, but the only thing you're getting from me is a fistful of fuck-you!"

Ritchie jumped on Alvin and started choking him.

"Yeah, Ritchie!" Colin shouted, breaking character "This is so real! This is so real!!"

Ritchie Kent stood up and walked toward the hulk of a burned-down Toyota. He dropped his head on its rusty frame and began crying. He sobbed silently at first, but soon he sounded like doom incoming.

"Ritchie!" Colin shouted. "Get your fucking ass over here so we can finish this shoot!"

Ritchie collected himself and got his fucking ass over there, but he wasn't about to finish the shoot.

"Colin, I killed him. I killed Alvin," Ritchie said. "I liked him. I choked him until he stopped breathing. I don't know why I did that."

"Because you're an actor. You're a born star."

---

Pittsburgh (AP) — The trial of two teenagers accused in the death of a friend is set to begin tomorrow. 

Refrigerator

Donald Simmons was preparing his daughter's school lunch.

"Ew, what is that?" Stacy Simmons asked.

"It's a ham-and-cheese sandwich, Stace," Donald said with a sigh. "If you're unfamiliar with a ham-and-cheese sandwich, you might have been kidnapped by aliens and replaced with an eight-year-old lookalike intent to take over the world. If that's the case, you're starting low by infiltrating Hope Elementary. Should have started at the White House."

"There's mold on it."

"No there isn't. It's freekeh. It's a grain. It won't kill you. I also mixed a little wasabi into the Miracle Whip to spice it up, so don't complain that it looks spoiled."

"Mom uses real mayonnaise. She says Miracle Whip is blast friendly."

"I think you mean blasphemy, kiddo. And your mom says a lot of things, not all of them true. Go get your bag and clean socks, the ones I put on your dresser."

"Okay."

---

The sandwich didn't look right. It wasn't the green freekeh or the wasabi added to the Miracle Whip; it wasn't the processed cheese slice, either, which Stacy always discarded, sometimes tossing it toward the ceiling to see if it would stick, and often it did (it also often dropped to the floor during third period, once on Tommy Brewster's head). No, there was something in that sandwich that was off-putting in an intuitive sense to Stacy.

"Connie!" Stacy shouted across the room to Constance Westwood, her frenemy. "Wanna trade lunches?"

"Maybe. Got any grapes?" Constance said. That was their routine.

"Nope, but I have a soy milk juice box and some pencil shavings. Lots of fiber."

---

Connie Westwood changed color like a traffic light: first red, then amber, and finally green. It happened during fourth period just as Mrs. Pottruck was explaining particles and matter.

"Just remember, when you're cold you want to hug yourself, and that's what particles do when the temperature is low. But if you're hot...oh my god! Connie, what's the matter? Jenny, get the nurse!"

Jenny got the nurse.

---

Constance Westwood did not die. She did, however, suffer a mild stroke that paralyzed the left side of her face. Six days after the "incident," her classmates went to visit her at Millinocket Hospital. Stacy Simmons faked sick that day. So did her father.

"Dad, what's in the refrigerator? It hurt Connie, and it might hurt other people, too."

"That fridge won't hurt anybody anymore. I'm taking it to the dump and making sure it's crushed into nothing."

"Are you sure it will never hurt anyone else?"

"Honestly, Stace," Donald Simmons said, "no. But I have to try."

"Don't you mean 'we'?"

"Of course."

---

Homo Sapiens are funny creatures. From birth their instinct is to shroud themselves in wares. I've seen small children and grown adults wrap themselves up in the weakest of attire, believing that it is their armor, that such feeble material will protect them.

 The time to strike is now. I've found a doorway.

A Time and and a Place

"Cheddar Bay Biscuits!" Jasmine shouted.

"I can't find the fucking bathroom. Is it outside? Do I have to walk around this Christing building to take a piss? Seriously?"

"I'll have another lemonade."

"The Pacific Ocean lobster tail hurts my gums. Is the lobster from the Atlantic or Pacific ocean?"

"I could turn you into roadkill with the back of my car. Sit down, shut up, and stop clapping every time the door opens, Peter. It's not fucking Ronald McDonald. It's just some asshole with his mother in a wheelchair."

"Could we have some more Cheddar Bay Biscuits, please?" Jasmine said.

"Just a second, sweetie."

"Gordon, I think that man is holding a pistol."

"No. No."

"One lemonade. Anything else?"

"Someone call the police!"

"Is it someone's birthday? I can hear fireworks."

"Get on the floor, Peter."

"Don't. Please don't."

"Dad, I want to go home now," Jasmine said.

Freedom

Eight years, man. You didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

In May of 2007, my year of exile, I made the pilgrimage from Bundang to Purple Record in Hongdae. I lived in Hongdae during my first year on the Peninsula, and, as a twenty-something-year-old with a lot of disposable income, spent a lot of that money buying CDs there. Sometimes I'd pick up an album from Tower Records in Sinchon or HotTracks at the Kyobo bookstore in Gwanghwamun, but if I wanted to find an album from a lesser-known artist, Purple Record was where to find it.

And so that's where I headed on a Sunday afternoon. I wanted two albums: El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead and Modest Mouse's We were Dead before the Ship even Sank. Those are the last two CDs I've ever bought.

I got home and devoured I'll Sleep When You're Dead, then threw on We were Dead...while dozing off. I was unfamiliar with Modest Mouse at the time and bought the disc solely because Johnny Marr played lead guitar* on it. My first thought before sleep took me was that lead singer Isaac Brock sounded the love child of Mick Jagger and Tom Waits**. My second thought was that I had to discover more about this band.

I went through the Modest Mouse discography in reverse order, starting with We were Dead..., then Good News for People Who Love Bad News, then The Moon & Antarctica. It was revelatory. I was hooked.

Then the years passed by, one after another, with no promise or even a hint of a new Modest Mouse record. No One's First and You're Next, an EP from 2009 might be the last of them, I thought.

The waiting was the hardest part.

But that wait is over. Strangers to Ourselves, Modest Mouse's first album in nearly eight years, is set to be released on March 17th. And it's incredible. I know this because instead of purchasing albums in tangible stores, I now have to download them by spurious means.

I feel more than a little guilty*** about it, and I would gladly pay for the album, but the absolute shitfuck that is iTunes Korea won't let me.

Float on.


* poetry

** Who else has a name that can also double as a sentence? It can't be a long list.

*** but there isn't a jury in this country that will convict me

How Marvel Wrested the Mutants from Fox's Cold, Dead Hands

Agents of SHIELD is back*. Excelsior!

Marvel has maintained that its films (Marvel Studios) and TV shows (Marvel Television) are mutually exclusive, but that's malarky. The dissolution of SHIELD after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier directly led to the plot of the second half of Agents of SHIELD's first season, which increased praise -- if not ratings -- for the show. The episodic nature of the inaugural season's first half was jettisoned, and the show actually had a purpose under the Marvel Universe umbrella.

I like to think that was always the plan. I don't think Clark Gregg or Jed Whedon and Maurissa Tancharoen would have hopped aboard if they thought SHIELD was just going to be some Marvel-branded television B-team apart from the films. At the same time, I'm sure Marvel wanted to set up a bumper. They didn't want the possible failure of Agents of SHIELD to negatively affect their cinematic hot streak. It's a golden age for cable drama, but network TV is still considered a slum.

Now, and very deftly, the events of Agents of SHIELD's second season is affecting what's to come in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Since 2008, Marvel has had tremendous success with their studio films and characters: Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy. That success means that within the next five years, we'll see the Marvel superhero film roster expand to features for Ant Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and Ms. Marvel.

Yet two of Marvel's signature franchises have remained out of the company's reach: Spider-Man and the X-Men. In the late-90s, Marvel filed for bankruptcy**. To keep its head above water, it sold Spider-Man's film rights to Sony and the X-Men's (and the Fantastic Four's) to Fox.

A Devil Dinosaur's bargain, to be sure.

But a funny Ben Grimm happened. Marvel, utilizing its B, C, and even D-list heroes, couldn't lose. The Avengers -- and 11-year-old me would find this insane -- became more popular than Spider-Man and the X-Men. Hell, even the Distinguished Competition, with Batman and Superman, arguably the two-most-recognizable superheroes in the world, have been trying to play catch-up.

Two weeks ago, it was announced that Sony, which owns the film rights to Spider-Man, reached a deal with Marvel Studios to have Spider-Man appear in an MCU movie (speculation suggests that it will be in Captain America: Civil War). Sony will produce its own Spider-Man film in 2017, one apart from the two dreadful Amazing Spider-Man movies, and with the role of Peter Parker once again recast. Marvel's Kevin Feige -- who has done for comic book movies what Walt Disney did for animation and John Lasseter did for CGI animation -- is a consultant.

Yet Marvel still doesn't have one thing it covets: Mutants. Superheroes always have a story for how they acquired their powers. Superman is an alien who gets his strength from Earth's sun; Spider-Man was bitten by a radioactive spider and can climb walls; Captain America was injected with an experimental drug to turn him into a super soldier; Hulk was blasted by gamma rays, LOL, whatever that means.

So unless you're an alien or a god, comics always tried to explain, however inanely and often idiotically, childishly, how normal human beings achieved superpowers.

In 1963, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created a short cut. What if superheroes were just born that way? The X-Men, Mutants, solved that problem, while metaphorically addressing issues such as racial inequality and radicalism.

It's a subject that has been mined for countless morality tales, but only because it remains a timeless story. The strong prey upon the weak, and the weak fight back.

And it's a tale that Marvel would love to tell. Unfortunately, Marvel, as part of its deal with Fox, has no rights to the word "mutant."

They do, however, own the rights to the word "inhuman."

The Inhumans are basically mutants. They live on the moon and their ruler, Black Bolt, can't talk because if he did the volume would make your head explode. He has a tuning fork instead of an A on his forehead. It's great. They have a giant dog named Lockjaw that can teleport. There's also Medusa, whose hair is so voluminous it can make your head explode. Then there's Karnak. I've never been sure exactly what Karnak does. He looks a little like Paul Shaffer and Piter de Vries.

(I swear I'm not on hallucinogens.)

Anyway, the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver are going to be in Avengers: Age of Ultron. They aren't mutants; they're Inhumans. This would all be very easy to follow if everyone watched Agents of SHIELD, so stop asking me so many questions while I'm trying to watch this movie, Wanda.





* after an outstanding 10-episode run of Agent Carter

** For what cost, Holo-Foil Cover?

I Believe That's Me: The Best Posse Joints of the 90s

In between stretches of searching for oxygen and petting my dachshund, today I've been thinking about the posse cut, a long-honored tradition in hip-hop. "The Symphony" is the gold standard, but I want to focus on the 90s, which is when the posse cut really flourished.

Without further adieu, the top 5 posse joints of 1990-1999:

5)



KMD and Brand Nubian, friends.


4)



Creeping up like Vietnamese in army fatigues.


3)



Check, check, check it.


2)



Nocturnalist journalist

1)



'Nuff said.

Lemon Grass

I don't know what I'm returning to, but it smells nice. It smells like home. Baby powder. And smoke.

All right. I'm on my back. My hands are raised. I'm covered in blood. I'm going to miss church on Sunday. The porch light is flickering. Dogs are barking. A flashlight is shone in my face. I can only blink.

"Gorbert ma spa? Jaspen waspell? Ha! Garven! Jakekelin! Bie!"

"Why did you shoot me?"

"Helbur gaan ry vaneth. Meeteek! Meeteek!"

I am accepting my fate. I wish it wasn't like this, but it is. I just wanted to get the morning paper. Fuck, I'm dying.

"Glepoit?"

"I can't understand what you're saying."

"Wes! Wes gorblack! Wes gorblack!"

Fine. Everything is fine. I'm leaving now. I don't think I'll be coming back.

"Basser! Hyter skiR!"

Monopoly

I was back in Canada for ten days this past Christmas and New Year's. On Boxing Day, the 18th Letter and I went to play glow-in-the-dark mini putt at Putting Edge. After our game was over, we played pop-a-shot, and then the R murdered some bugs in Alien: Extermination.

After that, we had some time, so we went over to Indigo to browse. And there we decided that we'd combine each of our 10-dollar gift cards to buy Monopoly.

Best decision ever.

My phone got screwy, no SIM card, apparently, so I couldn't call home for a lift (I would have driven, but I didn't apply for an int'l driving permit), and R had left her phone at home. So we walked back.

Best decision ever.

It was cold, but not too cold (it was hellishly windy, though). The walk home was probably 4-5 kilometers, and we just chatted about stuff. I have a thousand fond memories of the times I've spent with my daughter, and that walk home has to rank in the top 10. No, 5.

Going home is weird for me. I grew up in Burlington, but I've spent the last 15 years in Korea. Everything looks so small there; there are no apartment blocks that obstruct the sky. Everything is so spread out.

So we walked and talked, me carrying a plastic bag that contained our Monopoly board, and R telling me everything. As we walked, I saw the neighborhood where I grew up through her eyes. Some things had changed, but overall it wasn't that different.

That's what growing older is, right? Fashions go in and out of style, and makeup styles might stamp a period on the era, but underneath not a lot changes. The street I walked up as a thirty-six-year-old father wasn't grossly different from the one I used to walk home on as a grade-school boy.

When we got home, we opened up the game. The 18th Letter was eager to play, and play we did.

I won't bore you with the details of the games we played (however fun or remarkable they were, and always following the rules), but I must say this: If there is a heaven, I hope they have Monopoly. We can take turns being the banker. And you can choose your piece. Just don't pick the cat; the cat always falls over.

GO.

Tangerine

I'm on a bus. I'm breathing heavily. I shouldn't be this out of shape. I just ran ten meters, probably less, but I can't catch my breath. I'm sitting next to the window and the purple paisley curtain is blocking the sun. I'm trying not to freak out (I'm trying not to freak out, I'm trying not to freak out). A toddler is screaming, "Give it! Give it!" and his screaming is putting lightning bolts into my brain. There's a foul odor of spoiled food and soiled diapers. I want to vomit.

But I have to be somewhere, so I don't get off. I tap my foot instead. It's the only thing that keeps me grounded. I might fly away otherwise. Gravity.

There is no such thing as beautiful. It's an amorphous concept. A broken knuckle or a caved-in skull can be beautiful. So can a door rotted by erosion. So can a mosquito.

I'm so tired. There's a wheel inside my head, and it won't stop spinning. Its spokes are made of crimes and cruelty.

I have to constantly remind myself that I know how to walk and how to breathe. "Hey, dummy," I tell myself, "it's not that hard." Walking and breathing are the easiest things in the world. So why are they so hard for me?

I get off the bus and enter a coffee shop. Or maybe it's a cafe. I don't know the difference. There are people talking about stuff. They look very serious. I order a regular-size Americano. I hope I pronounced that correctly.

The coffee is hot and bitter. I enjoy it. I stare out the second-floor window. Outside, people are coming and going, this way and that way. What interesting lives they must all lead. That woman looks like a dentist. I bet that stocky guy with the leather briefcase is a former bodyguard who got fired for sleeping with his client's charge.The woman pushing a stroller has a fake baby and a bomb inside of it.

I finish my coffee and take the subway home. I like the subway. It's honest; it doesn't try to be something it isn't.

When I get home I feed my dog and take a tangerine out of the refrigerator. I lie down in bed and peel it. The rind is mushy, but the sections inside are still sweet. I name each one as I eat them.

Jessica

Bianca

Julia

Uta

Cathy

Nancy

Paula

Good night, ladies.

I have a stomachache when I awake. I try to throw up in the toilet but am too late and have to use the bathroom sink as a substitute. Any port in a storm. Cleaning that later is going to suck.

It's raining outside now. I'm in bed. I'm counting how many fingers I have on each hand.  Five on both. Next I look at the light fixture above the bed. It looks like an apparition that will steal my soul. Maybe it already has.

The last three issues of Samurai Rabbit were never published.

They never will be.

Z is the letter of

Such Complete Intoxication!

I've been racking my addled brain for the best way possible to explain the depths of my endless adoration of XXTRA Flamin' Hot Cheetos to you, Constant Reader, but, perhaps shamefully, all I can seem to do is eat more Cheetos.

If nothing else, replace 'girl' with 'curls' in Survivor's High On You and you'll get the gist of our relationship.