Tuesday, September 18, 2007

The Devil Its Due






Chalk it up to a 14 hour shift (Monday/Tuesday), 8 the next (today), and then, inexplicably, I am working tomorrow from 9 AM until 1 AM Thursday. But my sleep habits are nil. I don't even know if that sentence makes sense. In the last half hour I have drank coffee, mango juice, and now ice water. I was watching RACE WITH THE DEVIL at 3 this morning, a great bad film from 1975 with Peter Fonda and Warren "I'm Getting Too Old For This Shit" Oates, where satanic bikers chase them as they drive a Winnebago all around the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. I look at the Chinese poem about the banyan tree, hoping to get drowzy. I listen to Yusef tell me the city is bad after dark. (Well duh.) I Google the advertisement that says Hayden Panitierre has got milk. (To keep it a level field, Masi Oka also has milk.) Still awake. Google "asian cult cinema" and see above. The button was a birthday gift from my niece Ashley. She knows I am afraid of clowns. Have any of you been told the story behind my fear of clowns? Its quite vivid and graphic. Christ, I wish I could drink some whiskey with my vanilla ice cream, but I only hit the booze roller coaster at conventions, trying to carry on Karl Edward Wagner's legacy to little avail. (But, damn, the Zanzibar club in Toronto was amazing; a Romanian girl told me all about a Romanian doctor who performed belly button surgeries for would-be strippers. Guess I can now write the, ah, bar bill off as story research). And, since being in Canada that first week of April, I have had two Budweisers. That is all. Roller coasters are better when blacking out in foreign lands. Bob thinks I should write a memoir without explaining who people are, like no footnotes or whatever, so this should be one whack-job entry. Ten after midnight. If I went to sleep now, I'd lie awake until 2. Guess I'll Google that asian cult site again...Wayne

6 comments:

James Robert Smith said...

You don't have to explain who Karl Wagner was to present him as the interesting person he was.

I met him about twelve times in my life. Since I rarely make much of an impression on anyone, I had to introduce myself each time I met him. In those dozen or so times, he was always drunk as shit. The last time I saw him was at a show in Atlanta (maybe a DragonCon?). He looked so horrible that he could see the horror written on my face and I apparently could not hide the shock of seeing the old barrel-chested guy reduced to this emaciated husk. So in the middle of whatever it was he was talking about, he paused, looked at me, and said, "You know. I'm recovering from Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. Got a tick bite. The rash appeared. Raging fever. Doc prescribed these medicines, and I'm recovering." I nodded as he pointed to the rust-colored spots on his dry, aging skin, and he went on with his story of something or other he'd done in London.

I don't think it was too long after that encounter that I read on the internet that he was dead. I was surprised, but I wasn't surprised. I was shocked and sad, but I expected it. He killt himself.

Charles Gramlich said...

I need to go without sleep for the next few days to get caught up on everything I've got to do. But somehow I don't think I'll make it.

Drizel said...

hey babe....insomnia is the biatch I also wanna wack sometimes....hihihi...I hate when I start walking trough my own mind and I cannot find rest between the hords of ideas, hates, loves and life....
Luffies maaikie

Sidney said...

Wow I haven't seen "Race With the Devil" in eons. That should be on a double bill with "The Devil's Rain."

Hey, you know Peter Fonda is in "3:10 to Yuma" in a good role though he gets over being "gutshot" awfully quickly.

James Robert Smith said...

The funny thing about Peter Fonda is that he was actually gutshot when he was a kid. So he played it like he lived it. He almost died, but lived to use the experience in his latest acting gig.

Anonymous said...

Here in Sierra Vista, we have the Landmark Cafe, which is decorated with 100s of clowns. It used to be 1000s, but they had a house-cleaning about a year ago and got rid of a bunch.