More on Santa: A Message to My Nephew

I had a column ready for print, but before it got a chance to reach that stage, the newspaper (which endured but never quite flourished) went under. The loss of two graphic designers and a general sense of apathy seemed likely causes. The column, which is merely on this blog and nowhere else, is titled “Down with Santa.”


To further explain my anti-Santa stance, and backpedal on it a   tad--since I do enjoy smiling children (especially my nephew) and the causes of their smiles--I decided to do a sequel to "Down with Santa," and this one is not as Scrooge-like because I don't aspire to become too much of a grouch, or—God forbid—an ultimate grouch: a curmudgeon.

It's just that I can't get past the notion of lying to kids in order to give them cheer. That's a puzzling tradition to me, and when I encounter things I don't understand—which is just about everything—I ask questions and crack jokes.

For instance, does part of the fun of Christmas revolve around the fact that kids are gullible? Generations ago, was the mythology started by some rascally dad who fed spontaneous nonsense to his children purely to see if they'd accept it as the truth?

And did he, by chance, talk it over with his wife later?

“Guess what, dear? I told Susie there's a jolly fat man in a sleigh led by flying reindeer who delivers presents to millions of people across the globe on Christmas Eve. And here's the best part: She bought it! Ha!”

I bought the fib, too, but when I found out the truth, I got distraught. It felt like a cruel prank. My seventeenth birthday was ruined.

Just kidding.

Anyway, I realize that kids really get a kick a out of their imaginations, and it's a shame how adults forget what that's like; in fact, that's part of the reason they tell kids about Santa in the first place: to relive that wonder.

And even though I've shown no inclinations for fatherhood in my 20s, I've lucked into becoming an uncle, and I feel a great sense of loving duty for my nephew. The father/ uncle dynamic is as Batman-to-Robin as they come, but any time I'm needed for an assist, I want to be there to fight the crimes this world may have in store for my nephew.

Furthermore, since I'm pretty sure my brother and sister-in-law will indulge my nephew in the Santa mythology, I have no right to be a Scrooge about it. For his sake, I'll go along with the Santa malarkey for as long as required.

I do have a message for him, however, after he has learned the truth—from his parents, friends, self, or whomever. When I catch wind of his enlightenment, this is the message I'll send him.

Hey Buddy,

If you're reading this, that means you no longer believe in Santa. I hope you don't feel disillusioned about it all like I did. Your mom and dad were mainly trying to grant you joy and excitement, to get your mind  marveling about this life, and while what they told you was not 100% honest, when you're my age, you'll find that discovering the false nature of Santa is far from the worst thing that could happen.

Now that you know about Santa, I think you're old and mature enough to be let in on a few other fibs Uncle Nick either participated in or started. Are you sitting down, pal? You should.

You know that unicorn stable I've told you so much about but never brought you to? Well, that doesn't really exist, either. Those pictures I gave you from time to time of me on a jet-pack feeding deep dish pizza to my airborne unicorns were photo-shopped. I still think you're very smart, but to be honest, I'm kind of surprised you didn't call “Bull-crap” on Uncle Nick last Thanksgiving.

To come clean about another fib involving air-travel, I don't actually own a gigantic gumdrop hovercraft that disappears whenever I say the magic words. That was not the truth, and I told you otherwise because I wanted you to think I was a really cool uncle. In reality, I generally get from point A-to-B in a Honda Accord.

Finally, I was not captured by leprechauns who spun me around in a swivel chair for hours until they finally believed me when I said I didn't know where their gold was hidden when I acted funny at that family get-together. Truthfully, it was St. Patrick's Day and I got awfully drunk. Heck, aside from the designated driver whose identity I can't recall, we all did. Also, those leprechauns I mentioned are fictional, and the same goes for both dragons and my brief yet lusty marriage to that actress who played the Catwoman...but if it makes you feel any better, the jury's still out on Bigfoot.

Sorry. These fibs adults tell tend to snowball on us all. Please don't be mad at me. When you were a year old, because your cheeks were puffy with flesh and inflated with glee, I took to calling you “Chubby Cheekers.” By the time you were two, though, you got to be so word-savvy and verbal that I had to retire that nickname—out of fear that I might hurt your feelings.

The point is, I had to change as you got older. We had to change. It's all around us and unavoidable, and at the risk of sounding like too much of an optimist, 51% of the time, it's for the better.

You're a lot different than you were when I sometimes called you Chubby Cheekers, but my God, your ample jawline was proof that you were as jolly as Santa Claus, and you're still jolly to me. You so often bring a smile to my face and I can think of no finer way to define jolliness.

And, unlike the gumdrop hovercraft, that's no fib. It's the truth.

Love,

Uncle Nick

Bitch Objects to Being Called Ho

CHICAGO, Illinois (Associated Press)--

What began as an ordinary shoot for a rap video bound for YouTube erupted in calamity on Saturday, May 14th. Prior to filming a scene in the parking lot of a Red Roof Inn, local rapper Choco Ballz, 34, was harangued by Bajama Jones, a 22-year-old bitch, for referring to her as a “ho.” At the peak of the dispute, Choco Ballz, born Clarence Ivory, was thrown to the concrete and beaten. Jones later offered the following account.

“(Ballz) started ego-trippin' between takes, tryin' to get the bitches in my group all hot and bothered about his broke ass. He shouted, 'I wanna see some enthusiasm outta you hoes!' And I'm like, 'What? How dare you call me a ho! I'm a bitch.'”

Though Ballz describes the gaffe as “a damn shame,” he maintains that he tried his best to distinguish the bitches from the hoes at the video shoot.

“In the rap game, it's frowned upon to mistake a bitch for a ho and vice versa and I get all that, but hear me out: my director clearly asked all the hoes to form a line to the left of the Cadillac I borrowed from my cousin. So, either she can't follow directions, or else she really is a ho.”

Jake Hostetler, a recent Film graduate from Northwestern University and director of “South Side Joy Ride,” accepts a degree of blame for the misunderstanding.

“While I do adore the hip hop genre, I'm not quite certain how to differentiate a bitch from a ho,” Hostetler admits. “Perhaps I should have emphasized the difference between regular-left and stage-left.”

The apologetic speech Hostetler gave Jones did little to quell her indignation. Jones immediately posed a rhetorical question to the director. 

“First off, how can a 'left' be anything other than a regular left? And secondly, if that hipster don't know that a ho is like a mercenary who'll fuck any dude no questions asked, whereas a bitch is a loyal soldier who'll kill for her man, he shouldn't be directing rap videos in the first place.

“Pasty-faced punk,” Jones added.

The Hostetler/Ballz collaboration got testy not long after filming began. In response to a lyric in the song's first verse, “I got a bald head like my name was Horace Grant,” a nearby Jones howled with laughter and then booed Ballz for what she deemed “a weak-ass rhyme.”

“Who the hell is Horace Grant?” asked a confounded Jones. “Seriously! If you old enough to know who Horace Grant is and you ain't made it yet, you never gonna make it.”

Tension escalated to chaos 20 minutes later, when Ballz made his bitch/ho faux pas. Overcome with scorn, Jones confronted Ballz, shouted obscenities in his face, and wrangled him down when he attempted to flee into the lobby of the Red Roof Inn. Her rampage intensified after she thought she heard Ballz call her a “ho” a second time. In reality, witnesses attest that the terrified rapper was merely screaming, “Whoa!”

         

“Maybe I didn't have to snap that antenna off the hood of his cousin's ride and whip him a bunch of times and maybe I did,” Jones said. “We'll see which way Judge Judy rules when the time comes.”

Filming was postponed indefinitely due to the fracas, and in response to the attack, Ballz is debating whether to press charges or take the case to Judge Judy “for exposure.” Before his gurney was lugged into the back of an ambulance, Ballz had this to offer.

“I've always been one to treat bitches and hoes as equals,” Ballz lamented. “But when shit goes down like it did today, I gotta dig deeper for that conviction. To me, it's a real sad day not only for bitches, but for hoes as well.”

As for those aforementioned hoes, while they voiced disapproval, none interceded in the fight. When asked why her sect failed to restrain Jones, a ho who prefers to remain anonymous replied with five simple words.

“'Cause that bitch is crazy.”

(Hoes' woes continued on page B6: “Bankrupt Hostess Spells Doom for Ho-Ho's.”)

Down with Santa

My understanding of Santa Claus radically changed when I was 8. I heard the truth about the fat man in red from my older brothers. They teamed-up to unload the bombshell during one of those dreaded fits of boredom that so often drive older brothers to acts of mean mischief. As the youngest in a family of Catholics, I was, by consequence, the last true believers in Santa Claus. This belief, this jolly yet delusional bubble, was burst by my brothers on a random night, months before Christmas, when I was beckoned from the love-seat to the couch to receive an important message.


“Hey. When we get presents for Christmas, you know how you think they come from Santa Claus?”

I paused and almost quibbled that not all of our presents came courtesy of Santa Claus, that grandma and grandpa and even mom and dad chipped in a little bit, but in the end I simply said, “Yeah.”

“Well, that's nothing but bull-crap! For Christmas, mom and dad are the ones who buy us presents. Then they just scribble 'From Santa' on the tags! It's a trick. A lie! And you fell for it. Santa's not even real.”

My aloof expression drew taut and troubled. This felt cataclysmic.

“No! It can't be true.”

They snickered and goaded me to ask mom if I didn't believe them, and when she somberly confirmed what my brothers had told me, their snickering gave way to howls of celebration. I didn't handle this grave revelation with poise. I wept and whimpered, and that typically has the effect of a Fourth of July fireworks show for older brothers.

My imagination was hit by a terrorist attack. I'd been duped. Taken for a fool. I connected the dots to other figures of dubious existence and in no time flying reindeer, the Tooth Fairy, and Johnny Appleseed fell like dominoes. My faith in God teetered; I put the man upstairs on notice. Adults lost a great deal of credibility the moment I learned the truth about Santa. By sixth grade, with the same grudging, Santa-is-for-suckers mindset of my brothers, I partook in the heckling of the only kid in class who still filled out a wish-list to that phony from the North Pole. I still can't stand Santa. This Christmas I'm sure to groan when I watch a weatherman put the nightly forecast on the back-burner so that he can speculate the whereabouts of a make-believe character.

“You bumbling jerk,” I'm likely to gripe at him. “Santa's fake and you know it.”

Ideas don't get much worse than the Santa-Tracker. On Christmas Eve, the transition from bad news—the downers about bombings in Israel and muggers posing as carolers—to a full-grown weatherman babbling about Santa is always a shaky one. It goes something like this:

“To recap tonight's top story, there were no survivors in the attack as war in the Middle East rages on with no end in sight...” The anchorwoman shuffles papers anxiously. “And now here's meteorologist Kenny Cumberland with an update on how local fog could be a real test for Rudolph's bright red nose. Kenny?”

Kenny forces a smile. “Hey! It's almost eleven and most kids are in bed by now, but I'm here to give you the scoop on Santa, anyway. See this graphic of a man in a sled led by flying deer? That's him, all right—making his way through Winnebago County!”

What ever money was put into Santa-Tracker technology would've been better served to fund anything else. Seriously, financing millions of dollars into wacky things like a Bigfoot Finder or a Loch Ness Monster Caller would still be more practical than the damn Santa-Tracker.

We learn about the nature of Santa (and the bogus doodads that track him) in a variety of ways. My sister, for instance, found out by means of a Family Feud home game. The category was “Fictional Characters.” The third-most popular answer was “Santa Claus.” The board-game was supposed to be safe for ages 5 and up. Shame on you, Parker Brothers.

A more common debunking of Santa occurs when kids walk in on their unsuspecting parents spreading presents around the tree. This can be a painful memory, and it becomes a doomsday scenario when they're also role-playing as horny Mr. Claus and drunk Mrs. Claus.

How ever you discovered Santa was a fraud, the basic origin of the mythology is the same: Kids believe in Santa because adults conjured up a story about him. And since that story pretty much ruined my outlook on life, I'd like to suggest three ways he can be phased out.

1.Parents who dig sci-fi movies are advised to offer their kids a blue or a red Flinstone vitamin. Tell them that the blue pill, unlike the Santa-colored one, will allow them to see life and reality as it really is. If they choose the blue pill, go Morpheus on them and reveal the truth about the Santa Matrix. If they choose the red pill, consider disowning them.

More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.

Pitches for Reality Shows

With the exception of the choicest episodes of Cops, I'm not a fan of reality TV. I see enough melodramatic sideshows while I'm away from my living room.


Reality show domination hurts the chances of a writer finding a substantial audience, too. Writers get to be as obsolete as rotary phone fixers when most Americans prefer watching the unscripted sloth of Honey Boo-Boo's mom and the spontaneous sleaze of Snookie to a half-hour's worth of reading. No one is required to write the mind-numbing words that come out of Honey Mom's mouth before she sneezes twice and forgets her train of thought. No one has to construct a scene in which Snookie squats on a fire-hydrant. Snookie knows damn well when to do that, without help from a snobby writer, thank you very much.

The number of people whose existences are being recorded and broadcasted is swelling. Storage Wars, Breaking Amish, Duck Dynasty, Doomsday Preppers, Small Town Security, South Beach Tow, Buying Alaska, and four-dozen shows about pawn shops have proved there is no premise too obscure and no freak too clueless to be exploited by reality TV producers.

Since I have no clue how these quirky commoners get discovered, I decided to create my own characters and premises. If imagination is going to lead to bankruptcy, hell, maybe I should at least prove I've got a keen eye for this new breed of talent—those who somehow entertain without any of the skills of a traditional entertainer.


Here are three pitches for reality shows.


1.) C.C.'s Sea World

From: C.C. Crandle

Dear National Geographic Channel,

My dolphin-smitten wife, diabetic lesbian daughter, and I run a cotton candy stand at Sea World. As you might have guessed, I'm a sexist Vietnam vet who also plays flute in a Jethro Tull cover band.

The women in my life are infuriating. First off, since dolphins are so common at Sea World, the animal trainers are becoming suspicious of my wife Hattie's ogling of the dolphins and obscene remarks about their blow-holes. They suspect the old-ball-and-chain is sure to mount a dolphin (or possibly several) any day now. To see my high school sweetheart mutate into a ticking time-bomb of dolphin lust is right up there with the biggest letdowns in my life.

I've got other letdowns, though. Take my daughter Debbie. (I used to add “please” to that request, but it only made people laugh, and when I insisted that I was being serious, they still turned me down...so I gave up on the “Take my daughter Debbie please” line.) Debbie can't keep her damn sweet teeth out of our cotton candy supply! But when I banish her from the stand for awhile 'cause she's costing us too much cash, she goes off and spends hundreds of dollars on sugary snacks with that damn credit card her mom gave her. Debbie is seriously hooked on the white zing. In addition to Graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows, the s'mores she cooks on the grill outside of our trailer include ingredients like Gummy Worms, Pez, Starbursts, Honey Buns, Ho-Hos, and additional marshmallows. She chugs glasses of maple syrup on special occasions. For God's sake...on her driver's license photo, she's biting the head off a chocolate bunny. I tell ya, she's more diabetic than dame!

Plus, she's dating an older woman built like a manatee who, as luck would have it, gets paid to feed manatees. You can't make this crap up, National Geographic.

As for me, maybe I'm not perfect. Sometimes I catch hell for refusing to serve cotton candy to Asians, whether Vietnamese or otherwise, but my argument is that their slanty eyes still give me the willies. The higher-ups have also warned me to stop startling everyone I see sitting on a park bench by screaming at them, “Sitting on a park bench!” But my downfalls are nothing compared to those of the poison-ladies I'm doomed to live with.

While I'm imprisoned in this concrete wasteland, all I'm asking for is the attention of your fine network to document my woes, as a cautionary tale of how not to live (with the exception of the Jethro Tull skull tattoo, which more people really should embrace).

Unhappily yours while sitting on a park bench at Sea World,

C.C. Crandle

More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.

Waiting out the Permafrost

Here's a poem from years ago. Be serious!


The sharp thwack of a cupboard door,
like a meat cleaver striking a cutting board.

Crystal-specked hamburger meat
waiting out the permafrost.

The creak of a medicine cabinet and
rattling pills pulled through a quick slit of light.

Elliott Smith breathing from the stereo
recycling the dazzling doldrums.

See the millions of pixels on TV
smeared like neon on wet concrete.

Like a lit cigarette, my last pencil
shrinks all the way down to the nub.

Bad Zombies vs. Worse Zombies

I rose from the recliner in my friends' living room and said goodnight. Before I left, Cal handed me a copy of Return of the Living Dead. For a beat I studied the back of the DVD. Zombies devouring teenagers seemed likely. “Resurrection Cemetery” struck me as a conspicuous name for a burial site. I faked a frown and pointed to a tiny graphic at the bottom corner of the case.

“I don't know if I should watch this one. It's rated-R.”

“Hell, it should be NC-17,” Cal chuckled.

Somehow, his wife and couch-partner Ophelia managed to nod in agreement and shake her head ruefully in the same gesture.

“We watched it with our daughter. I had to cover her eyes for roughly a third of the movie.”

Feeling satisfied, I nodded and brought the case to my forehead and flicked it to mime a salute.

“Still glad I've never reproduced,” I said. “Bye.”

###

Released in 1984, it's a wonder Return of the Living Dead dodged that NC-17 rating. In addition to so much gory brain-eating (for the Returned zombies gorge not human flesh, instead they hunger only for the pink goo inside our skulls), a redheaded vixen strips bare at Resurrection Cemetery, gyrates and poses atop a concrete crypt, and remains nude throughout most of her remaining scenes—most notably after she returns as a zombie hellbent on destroying a cart-toting hobo. Her name is Trash. Her boyfriend's name is Suicide.

Here's the deal with Trash: she's trashy (except when terrified and/or getting killed). The deal with Suicide is that he's suicidal (and he's a whiny jerk about it).

Other mayhem worth relaying includes a bevy of cops getting tricked, ambushed, and decimated. Later, when it becomes clear that he is doomed, a man tearfully musters the will to crawl into a cremation-oven before he can turn into an undead psychopath.

Along with the twisted appeal (assuming you care to behold such atrocities in a movie), Return adds a vexing wrinkle to the zombie formula popularized in 1968's Night of the Living Dead: the zombies of the Reagan-age are almost indestructible. They are impervious to pickaxe impalings of the brain. They rage undauntedly after their heads have been sawed from their bodies. Their dismembered and diced body parts can somehow still gyrate with bad intentions. The only way to destroy the '80s zombies is to burn and incinerate them, to reduce them to ash that can no longer put up a fight.

Upon watching the scene in which gruesome things are done to the head of a zombie by two terrified workers at an army surplus store (one that, yes, handles skeletons,the occasional corpse, and dog specimens that have been split in half), I was nonplussed by the monster's perseverance. In fact, for a while I felt dismayed. Betrayed. I truly thought I understood zombies—which is a strange conviction to have about a ghoul that doesn't exist—and I was loath to see the laws of zombie-hood so utterly defied.

I had grown accustomed to watching the undead get re-killed when their noggins get skewered. At the age of 29, I was startled to learn that, unlike the zombies featured in everything from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead to Resident Evil (which surprisingly doesn't include “Dead” in its title), someone had conceived a different brand of zombies: one that could kill you after you had just blown its head off.

In an hour and a half of Return, a single zombie is destroyed by the survivors. The humans don't stand a chance in the battle of Louisville. All they can do is board windows and doors shut to keep the relentless monsters at bay. Their attacks, whether with sledgehammers or guns, only serve to knock zombies down or make them reel backward temporarily. When they flail and hack with lead pipes at arms groping through windows, it's in vain.

A second mockery of the rules of zombiehood gives the damn Reagan-zombies another advantage: These monsters are smart and articulate. Freshly undead cops and paramedics manage to respond to calls on CB radios to order backup (which is later ambushed and eaten). The top half of a cadaverous old woman delivers a poignant speech to explain why her lot craves for brains. Zombiehood in Return of the Living Dead does not entail the dumb yet determined zombies featured in everything from Dawn of the Dead to The Walking Dead to Zombieland. If anything, Returning as a zombie can do wonders for one's IQ, as is the case with Freddy, a rare punk/jock hybrid whose life and tender disposition fade to black in the arms of his high school sweetheart. When Freddy returns and attacks her inside the mortician's chapel, rampaging like a linebacker at a Black Flag show, he speaks with the psychological malice of Hannibal Lector.

The name of that eBook? Why, it's More Stories, and Additional Stories. 

Phony Write-in Candidates are No Joke

                                             ^ My former guidance counselor, Mr. Dinkle. Wink.^

 As much as I hate to admit it, once every four years, in November, politics become a more relevant topic than Thanksgiving and its hallmarks of gorging, bloating, self-loathing aftermath, and watching football. The presidential election is a pretty big deal. In 2012, when I wrote this story for a now-defunct newspaper, incumbent Barack Obama ran against Republican Mitt Romney. I did not tell anyone who to vote for, but I did remind everyone that, either way, they'd be voting for a man with a ridiculous name. Barack vs. Mitt? Spellcheck systems everywhere were overhauled because of those two. Holy shit, we went from George vs. John to Barack vs. Mitt in the span of eight years. Crazy.

Anyway, without overdoing the vigor, I'm a proponent of voting—if only because apathy doesn't mean a whole lot and choice at least counts for something. The other bit of advice I have on voting is to avoid writing-in a candidate whose name is fake and crude. The first time I voted, as I peered down at the ballot, I came across an unopposed candidate for Assistant to the County Treasurer's Make-up Lady or whatever the hell it was, and I opted to vote for my own candidate: Hugh Jass.

In retrospect, that was immature. I made a mockery of a hallowed right of democracy. Plus, Hugh Jass didn't even win. So I threw my vote away on that one!

In an effort to combat write-in candidate shenanigans, I reestablished contact with my high school guidance counselor, Mr. Dinkle, whose outrage on the issue I recalled from my senior class election. (I found Mr. Dinkle on LinkedIn. As a side note, he also sells defective bobbleheads during the summer.) I told Mr. D that he was right when he spoke out against phony write-ins at that assembly all those years ago. Then I asked him to offer his thoughts on prank-voting. Mr. D agreed. Here's his take on the “Hugh Jass Menace.”

###

Mr. Dinkle:

Thank you, readers of Fond du Lac's Nite Life Ink. Whether you've been drawn to the pictures of attractive young bartenders or you nearsightedly mistook this paper for a copy of Maturity Times, I implore you to read my plea.

As Nicholas alluded, the 2001 election for school government was a sordid ordeal. Initially, the vice presidency was won by “The Dude,” a hippie long-hair and bad influence from the film The Big Lebowski. “The Dude” was to serve under president “Party Boy.” The look of disappointment I gave that particular student body was nothing compared to the frowns I have expressed to senior classes in recent years. Standards have indeed fallen.

In my time as guidance counselor and overseer of student government, I have seen phony write-in candidates sully many elections. The fake names keep getting filthier and more difficult to understand, too. Why, the 2004 class wanted to elect “LeBong James” as their class treasurer. Three years later, the majority determined that the person most qualified to be class secretary was “Nellie Fartado.” Last year, “Anderson Pooper” was an unstoppable force on ballots until I started threatening to expel kids.

Student government functions as a microcosm of governing the world at large, and it's no laughing matter to taunt the virtues of free elections. There is NOTHING funny about voting for a made-up guy named “Bob Unghole,” or a fraudulent floozy named “Ho Malone.” Why, when I was a senior, we'd have tarred and feathered a youth if we caught him casting his vote for “Jimmy Farter.” But nowadays, when I tell a gym filled with hundreds of teenagers that “'George W. Bush-Muncher' has been disqualified from the running,” the fools hoot and squeal with glee.

My fellow citizens of this wondrous republic, we must prevent our elections from being corrupted by what Nicholas has boorishly referred to as the “Hugh Jass Menace.” I have lingering nightmares about the announcement I made onstage after the results had been tallied from the class of 2012's election.

“The search for a new president to lead the student body by example is vital to the success of our school. And whom did you elect by popular vote? 'Mike Hawk.' We asked you to elect a beacon of integrity and your answer was 'Mike Hawk.' Unacceptable. 'Mike Hawk' is an embarrassment!”

I tried to get through to them, but for some unconscionable reason, they only laughed harder.

Well, let me tell you something that's not funny at all: I'm tired of telling kids I'm embarrassed by “Mike Hawk.” Whether you're a student at my high school or one of millions whose intent is to help decide the future of our country, I beg you not to entrust your faith in the likes of “Harry Wang,” “Turd Kennedy,” and “Dick Stainy.”

Consider me a man on a journey to get relief from phony write-in candidates. The journey is much longer than a mere 50 yards. You're probably wondering, “Willy Make-It?” If Nicholas and I get enough support from readers like you, then yes, I will make it. We all will.

If we work together, regardless of whether a Republican or a Democrat becomes our next president, Americans can feel proud to keep “Governor Gonads” out of their voting booths.

Patriotically yours,

Mr. Dinkle

Replacement Ref Fires Back

All right, you football-freaks, if you all could stop bickering about how scab-referees cost your favorite team a win, pretty-pretty-please with sugar on top allow me to defend myself and my colleagues. Yes, earlier this year I worked as a replacement ref in the NFL while the real officials were on strike. And I'd like to point out that I'm pretty sure I correctly nailed an Eagles' lineman for a false start, and meanwhile, that Ed Hochuli ref you people suddenly wanna hug did nothing but bench-press a treadmill in his basement. I guess that's gratitude for ya.

          Our best efforts to succeed at the highest level of the reffing trade, under intense pressure and in a very short window of time, may have been criticized, but we weren't as incompetent as some of you ingrates think. While my associates had built their resumes by reffing everything from the Lingerie League to dog shows to pie-eating contests, I'd been busting my hump for decades as an official for a different sport that may cause brain damage: professional wrestling.

          Shortly after I damn-near graduated from high-school, I began my career as an amateur wrestling referee. When I made the jump from amateur to pro-wrestling, it was for two reasons: 1.) When you watch sweaty young men straddle and pin each other enough times, it starts seemin' fruity. 2.) Plus I got fired for “gross ineptitude.”

          Thankfully, the WWF came calling shortly thereafter. Apparently they were impressed by my reputation as a hapless referee and simply blown away by the awful score I got on that IQ test they gave me. My life was transformed in that magical moment when the owner of the company handed me a contract outside of a strip club and groaned, “Shit or get off the pot.” In a matter of weeks I was warning Jake “The Snake” Roberts to put his damn pet snake back in its bag and barking at Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake to stop scaring bad guys with those humongous scissors of his, and the jeers I got from Albuquerque to Tallahassee only toughened my skin. For all officials, our job entails making unpopular calls, and if that means sending young fans of The Undertaker or the Packers home with tears in their eyes while we refs rejoice in their sorrow, then so be it.

          Death-threats don't scare me anymore. I wasn't fazed when I got bundles of hate mail after I reffed that match between Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant at Wrestlemania V or X or whatever the hell it was. Sure, my critics still insist I had my back turned while Andre hit Hulk in the head with a steel chair (which was an illegal foreign object) because I got distracted by Andre the Giant's evil manager, that I wrongly counted the Hulkster down for the three-count and awarded the match and the championship belt to Andre the Giant. And to those naysayers, here's my rebuttal: My ruling stands. Get over it. Maybe Hulk did get knocked out by that illegal chair as the tape clearly shows and maybe he didn't, but I'm the ref and I didn't see it. So fuck you.

          I didn't become a referee for the approval of my fellow man, or the trophy wives or the money. Hell, I gave up on trophy wives years ago. I earn just enough scratch to shack up with prostitutes once in a while while I'm on the road. And I really don't give a shit if my fellow man disapproves of that.

          Not long after the story broke about the real refs going on strike, I was contacted by the NFL. Once a league official assured me that the gig—however temporary--would pay better than working this year's Summerslam, I was happy to hop aboard the football express. My God, they even held the contract-signing inside an office in New York City! I had to put on a fancy suit and shake hands with big shots and put on deodorant and everything. It felt far more legit than pressing a contract against the back of Bam Bam Bigelow outside of Titty-Titty-Bang-Bang's in Knoxville and signing it with a stripper's eyeliner as I had done to join the WWF.

          Lord knows my first few weeks jobbing as an NFL weren't perfect. On one occasion, I made a series of shadow-puppet gestures 'cause I forgot how to hand-signal a false-start penalty. Some football know-it-all on ESPN called me “substandard,”  but at least the paychecks kept coming. In spite of the bickering from the media and the fans, I finally got the cash to buy that pinball machine I'd had my eye on for so long.

More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook.

Vampire Fight (edit)

^ I still love this picture even though bears don't factor into this column at all. Why is the bear fighting the vampire in the first place? Who cares--sick him, bear!^

I revised this one recently for the October issue of a local paper that I contribute to.

Since the month of October climaxes with Halloween, I decided to write something about ghouls—vampires, in particular. Unlike zombie lore, vampire lore doesn't appeal to me, and so I didn't bother to watch a minute of True Blood or Twilight for an answer to the confounding question about vampires I'll soon be posing. The vampire flick that really sent my mind motoring in circles was the TNT original movie The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice.


The Librarian is awful, but that hardly matters. It depicts the sci-fi adventures of a witty scholar who vacations in New Orleans, where he encounters a plot-line that's basically Indiana Jones meets The Da Vinci Code. The main character shares the wry cleverness of Indiana Jones, but unlike Indy, he lacks prowess in both hand-to-hand and whip-to-sword combat. The librarian relies on a French vampire chick to save him from the attacks of the ex-KGB henchmen who factored into the plot somehow.

The film climaxed with an airborne tussle between Mademoiselle Vampire and Russian Dracula in a New Orleans bayou, and all the while, the librarian just bit his fingernails, shin-deep in a hurricane-ravaged puddle of his own urine. As the vampires grappled with each other, vanishing and reappearing twenty feet aboveground and exchanging punches, I became baffled by the nature of a vampire fight.

When two vampires duke it out, are they determined to sink their teeth into their rival's throat, or do they try to plunge a stake into the heart of the other one? Vampires kill by chomping throats, but they are killed by a stake through the heart. The paradoxical question is: When vampires fight, are they driven by their instinct for killing, or driven by the instinct to kill their opponent? Are they concerned with the only way they know how to slay, or are they concerned with the only way to slay their opponent? For my money, a vampire fight is a real mind-fuck of a stalemate.

It seems fruitless for a vampire to gorge on the jugular of another vampire because the ultimate goal of jugular-gorging is to convert a human into a vampire. A vampire on the hunt is basically an active recruiter for his own kind. There is no point in trying to convert somebody who has already been converted. That's why Jehovah's witnesses leave each other alone, choosing instead to pester all the rational heathens in their neighborhood.

Hypothetically, had Russian Dracula succeeded in turning his enemy's jugular into a geyser of Hawaiian-Punch, his victorious smack talk would've went something like this...

“Yeah, I sucked on that, bitch! Hope you enjoyed those centuries of devilry because I have delivered you from the eternal life of a vampire to...more of the eternal life of a vampire. Dammit, could we just arm-wrestle or something to settle this whole thing? Because I'm CONFUSED.”

Even zombies, the inept brethren of vampires, are smart enough to realize there is no sense in neck-gobbling one of your own. These vampires craning for each other's throats are just tracing the check-mark in a box that has already been checked.

Since I've provided reasons why a vampire biting another vampire's neck is preposterous, you might suspect that, by default, those Transylvanian terrors must break out the wooden stakes when they've got a score to settle among themselves. But that idea, too, can be refuted.

In simplest terms, do you know what sort of a vampire keeps a wooden stake handy at all times, stashed away in a pocket inside his cape or tucked into her lacy garter belt? A SUICIDAL vampire! A vampire brandishing a wooden stake is not a threat to innocent people; it's a monster's cry for help. Next to overdosing on bulbs of garlic, self-inflicted heart-staking has got to be the most common way vampires say goodbye to the cruel underworld.

If a vampire with a wooden stake is not suicidal, the alternative is that he's really stupid. When you've got superhuman powers, it's senseless to always lug around the thing you're vulnerable to. Underneath his red Speedo, Superman does not wear a nut-cup made of Kryptonite. The Wolfman is not equipped with holsters to hold revolvers loaded with silver bullets. The hero and villain in question value self-preservation, unlike a vampire with a wooden stake tucked behind his ear like a pencil.

It seems absurd to have a serious debate about non-existent creatures, but I vaguely recall that I once did that. A devout fan of True Blood and Twilight and probably the Eddie Murphy flick where he plays a vampire in Brooklyn told me that vampires can be killed by decapitation, too. She added that vampire fights typically end in this ghastly fashion.

The notion of killing a vampire by beheading it is nonsense. All make-believe ghouls should have but one fatal vulnerability, and decapitation is the hallmarked method of (re-)killing zombies. The creator of the vampire mythology screwed up when he declared that a bloodsucker can be killed by both a stake through the heart AND decapitation.

The vampire's susceptibility to beheading is worse than just unoriginal; it's also damaging to their stature. As the number of ways a monster can be destroyed goes up, the power of said monster decreases. The main reason why the expression “Life is fragile” is so profound is because death is caused in a multitude of ways for humans. From faulty parachutes to diabetes to backyard wrestling to jerking-off with a noose around your neck like that dude from INXS, we're a very eclectic and creative species when it comes to dying.

Monsters are special because they are so much more elusive of the Grim Reaper than we are. When we hear the somber news that someone we know has unexpectedly passed away, the first question we ask is, “How did it happen?” When a zombie is informed of the (second) death of a fellow zombie, there is no reason to ask this question because they already know how it happened: Decapitation, or obliteration of the brain, if you want to nitpick. When you double the number of ways a creature can be snuffed out, the creature becomes less frightening, more human-like, and more inclined to bitch about how fragile life is.

All this is to say that although beheading one's opponent is probably the ultimate goal in a vampire fight, and even though I'm disappointed in that conclusion, I'm happy to offer some evidence that vampires rank below zombies when it comes to fragility. Vampire lovers, if you insist that your favorite ghoul is also vulnerable to beheading, you're tacitly admitting that zombies—who are typically regarded as dumb and inferior monsters—are in fact tougher and more resilient than vampires.

So, the next time you read about Bram's Dracula, stick THAT in your heart and Stoker it. Logic rules. Zombies drool. And vampires suck.

Brian Wilson's Sgt. Pepper Journals

In the back pages of rock and roll folk lore, it is rumored that Brian Wilson, the brilliant yet troubled singer/ songwriter of the Beach Boys, took copious amounts of LSD while listening to the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Wilson became a notorious shut-in for several years—overreacting, perhaps, to the sense of inferiority Sgt. Pepper inflicted on him.

Here's an entirely fake entry from Brian Wilson's journal. With the symmetry of Dark Side of the Moon and Wizard of Oz, it chronicles his thoughts on the Beatles album he found so incredibly inspirational it made him feel like giving up completely.

8/30/67

12:50 pm—My lady-friend seemed kind of miffed 'cause I slept in again today. She tried to rouse me out of bed at 9, but I could only moan and quip, “I guess I just wasn't made for this time.” She didn't laugh. I'm starting to think the only tunes she recognizes from my last record are the hits.

Oh, well. Not long after I woke up, I took a pretty mighty dose. And now I can't wait to celebrate the psychedelic ecstasy of the record that shattered my soul and waylaid my will to live.

1:00 pm—Man, that guitar riff has such a great melodic sting to it. The orchestral touches are so precise yet ambient that I wanna stick my head in an oven. Plus, apparently they finally found a guy to replace Ringo: a fellow by the name of Billy Shears. I'm really looking forward to getting a load of his chops as a vocalist.

1:02—Oh, that's right. It turns out Billy Shears and Ringo are one and the same. I forgot: the Beatles are going for an “alter-ego band” sort of approach. I gotta stop jotting down reminder notes on rolling papers that I later smoke. Anyway, this tune is totally groovy. My one qualm is that you really don't need friends in order to get high. I'm living proof!

1:05—I dig the ethereal keyboards and far-out imagery, but I can't help but wonder if there's a hidden meaning in its name, some kind of an inside-joke for the counter-culture. Hmmm... “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Lucy. Sky. Diamonds. I love it, but I'm drawing a blank. Maybe the “I,” “T,” and “W” in the title are a clue, a small piece to a puzzle that's, like, bigger than a million universes put together, ya know? “I.T.W.” Think, man, THINK... Internal Transcendental Wonderment? Intergalactic Thai-stick Wantonness? Golly-damn these Beatles; I can't crack their CODE!


1:09—I've got to admit, the happy demons in my skull are getting better all the time.

1:12—After Rhonda pounded on the locked door to my bedroom, she asked me what the you-know-what I'm doing in here. I groaned and quipped, “I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in!” She didn't laugh at that one, either. She screamed something about how I can't tell the difference between a hammer and my own “fanny” 'cause even though I can sing and write and she really likes that and stuff she doesn't think I'm a real man. Then I heard her muffled cry from the other side of the door and I got a vision of tears pouring out of her eyes. I puffed on a reminder-paper and sang along to the chorus about fixing a hole where the rain gets in and couldn't help but feel lousy when I considered what it all meant.

1:14—It didn't take long for Rhonda to pack her things and drive away from this place. She must have planned it beforehand. She was nice enough when I barely heard her say, “bye-bye.” I guess she's leaving home. Trippy.

1:18—This band does way too many drugs. Yet they're so brilliant I wish I could plummet from the moon blindfolded onto the piercing peak of Mt. Everest...or maybe just get a hug from somebody.

Dude! More Stories, and Additional Stories is the name of that eBook you've wanted for so damn long!