Monday, September 18, 2017

GrITs!


Finally, The Slumgullion Returns! With Mrs. C! Scott's Tales of Southern Gothic Cuisine! Star WarsFirefly! Running Gags! Two non-Stephen King fans talking about a Stephen King movie!

Please click below and enjoy.


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Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Happy Birthday, Sheri!

Astronaut/Supermodel/Spy S.Z. wearing the pelts of the cats who have wronged her.

I kid. Sheri has saved more cats' lives than cats have lives. Dogs too. And she's also visited the orphans and widows in their affliction, and kept herself unstained from the world with the aid of a good bleach pen.

In short, she's the best, most humane, and yet somehow also the funniest person I've ever known. She's like St. Francis of Assisi if he was female and also had a killer stand-up act. And today's her birthday!...which I'm not going to forget the way I forgot the 14th anniversary of World O' Crap (which she herself birthed) on August 20. (Okay, I didn't actually forget, but I was stuck standing around a truck stop in rural Alabama watching a very eccentric performance, which caused Sheri to decide that the movie I was working on is entitled Alabama Truck Stop [which to my ear sounds like a rollicking Harry Novack-style hillbilly sex romp from 1973], and offer up an image that I wish was our actual poster...

...because that would mean my life is a Peter Bogdanovich movie of a Larry McMurtry novel, instead of whatever weird-ass hullaballoo it's turned into).

However...this isn't about me. Or my problems with eccentric actors and sodium. We've come to praise Sheri, founder of Wo'C, afflicter of the comfortable, and that rare, genuine comforter of the afflicted. And while I do have a two-minute song prepared, I didn't come dressed to move, so instead, I'm going to turn her name over to an aggressive psychic who gives online astrology readings and fills up your emailbox with spam.

No, of course I'm not, because that would be cruel (and something she's already done to me), so instead, let's all tell her fortune as a fun group activity.
The zodiac sign for September 12 is Virgo. 
 Astrological symbol: Maiden.
Iron Maiden.
The sign of the Maiden influences people born between August 23 and September 22, when in tropical astrology the Sun is considered to be in Virgo.
Tropical Astrology was my favorite quick tanning foam when I was a teenager, but it could streak if you perspired, and often produced tan lines that resembled crabs and bulls.
It refers to the intelligence and clear behavior of these individuals.
People without intelligence and with unclear behavior ignore the Maiden and tend to be more influenced by the Trump.
The Virgo Constellation is one of the twelve constellations of the zodiac.
Collect all twelve!
 It is the second largest, spread on an area of 1294 square degrees.
So it's got plenty of closet space, and a livable basement.
The name Virgo is the Latin name defining Virgin, the September 12 zodiac sign in French it is Vierge and in Greek it is Arista.
In English it is Ben Shapiro.
 Modality: Mobile.
Virgos are gifted with the strange ability to move from place to place, utilizing ocean currents and their muscular abdomen.
Ruling house:
Uh...Harkonnen, I think.
 Element: Earth.
Which sadly never had a hit as a solo artist after it split from Wind & Fire.

But here's the key thing:
Lucky day: Wednesday. 
Which is tomorrow, so there's still time to buy a lottery ticket (if Sheri hadn't already spent all her disposable income on the upkeep of rescued animals, which she probably has). This is exactly the kind of timely, up-to-the-minute reporting that people expect from World O' Crap!

So please join me in wishing Sheri a birthday at least half as wonderful as she is, and please enjoy this geographically pertinent...

Sexy Birthday Lizard!

Lastly, if you've got an urge to do something nice for someone who does nothing but nice for others, click here and drop a few bucks in the pay pal bucket of Four Paws, the "non-profit, volunteer-run organization...dedicated to helping homeless dogs and cats" that Sheri works with.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Okay, But I Wasn't JUST Whistling "Dixie"...


I barely escaped Alabama alive. 

Not that I was a fugitive from a chain gang.

And not that I'd transgressed the local customs and left one step ahead of an angry mob toting buckets of hot tar and sacks of goose down. Quite the contrary; so many people offered me so many unsolicited greetings in so many unexpected venues -- in the grocery store, on the street, in the Mens Room -- that I was in a constant state of politesse-induced panic.

It wasn't even the workload, which after the first week was manageable enough that I had time to walk around, gawk at things, and perspire like a Yellow Fever patient.


It was the food that was killing me. It was the delicious, delightful, deadly food. 

Now I'm no expert on the cuisine of southern Alabama, and for all I know there were a multitude of hippie communes selling sustainable kale wraps out of roadside stands woven from hemp stems. I just know that every edible thing I found in the downtown area was salty, fatty, fried, and fatal. Which was also my experience the first time I came to Alabama back in 2003 to write Frankenfish, and I found myself asking the same question:

How is anybody alive in this state?

The way they eat, you'd expect to drive across the border and see nothing but bloated corpses bracketing the highway, the landscape permeated by an eerie silence broken only occasionally by the angry caw of two crows fighting over a length of intestine. 

I'm not saying the barbecue isn't tasty, because it is, and if you sit inside at a place like Moe's, or Dreamland, your clothes will smell like smoked meat for a week afterwards, so it's like they're sending you home with a doggie bag for your nose.  But everything's fried, and vegetables are surprisingly hard to come by as a side dish, except for grits, which I suppose is technically a vegetable, since it's made from corn. And butter. Actually, I'm pretty sure the Four Food Groups in Alabama are corn, butter, pork, and frying medium. 

I got so desperate for roughage that I actually ordered that classic Power Lunch of the Mid-80s Woman Executive, the chicken Caesar salad, even though I wasn't wearing one of those silk blouses with a pussy bow. But after one or two bites I dropped my fork, because it was too salty. It was, in fact, the saltiest salad I'd ever had. I daresay deers who live for a nice big salt lick would have taken a single taste of this Caesar salad and gone, "Ehhhh...No. My blood pressure..."


But aside from retaining water, I had an enjoyable time in Mobile, writing dialogue for a gifted and famously eccentric actor, even though I packed a small bag thinking I'd be there only three days, and wound up staying for three weeks. Me and the old ladies at the coin laundry next to the Whattaburger got to be quite chummy.

Unfortunately, the Unwritten Rules of the Rewriter prevent me from saying much about the experience, although I do delve into a little more detail in the upcoming podcast, because those aren't susceptible to Google searches.

Anyway, I'm back, and apologize for the blog blackout. And to make up for it, here are candid shots of the cats' excited, adoring faces when I walked through the door after my long absence...



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