I'm Being Followed By A Moonshadow

The subject heading would have read I Am Zardoz, but I didn't think many of you would know of that strangle little Sean Connery film, but then again, how many of you are familiar with Cat (Yusef) Stevens lyrics? I took the train up north to eat pizza and watch some films with Larry and Tycelia at their apartment. Larry showed me a new camera thingie on his wife's Mac and we took a few photos. That's Larry in the center, but almost all of you know that already. I had to cut out around 10 PM because it takes about two hours to get home via train, then bus, but the coolest moment was as I walked down Wilton Street a block to the el. From some apartment, "Riders On The Storm" was playing. I heard it my entire time and let it fade with ...killer on the road as I turned onto noisy Belmont Avenue. Anyways, here's the photos...Wayne

We, The Jury

Quite a few of you commented how I made up the whole being handcuffed tale (this means you, Steve!). Well, in my behalf, here are some witnesses that will attest to the mock photo: Dean Stockwell, Julie Schwartz (his ghost, actually), my lost love GloriAnne Gilbert (in this photo, we reenact a scene from MIDNIGHT EXPRESS. No, I wasn't the Randy Quaid character). My attorney, Count Midnight. And the star witness, Rowdy Roddy Piper, showing how the cop brought me down with a sucker punch in the first place. And now you know....Wayne

What You Gonna Do When They Come For You?

Mentioned this to Bob earlier when we were discussing Smiley Face. Some cops stay on a case, some could care less. I brought up something I hadn't thought about in a very long time. Back in 1982, while the Atlanta child murders were going on, there was a great reporter named Rick Soll covering the story for the Sun-Times. This guy was a great writer, wrote in a narrative that was stellar for its time, and yet he just fell "into the erff" and disappeared, the quotation marks being around a phrase cops around here commonly use. I think in cops novels they call it "in the wind." Well, anyways. Over the course of a week's articles, I made note of a pay phone near a mall that figured into two of the murdered boys. The fact was not mentioned, it was something that just was a realization that anyone might have if they had read each article, one kid had used that phone last, another had been seen near a phone in that same mall entrance between the time he disappeared and the time his body was found. Well, picture Wayne at the long ago age of 22 1/2, grabbing some blank paper and typing a letter to the Atlanta Murder Task Force on his manual Smith-Corona Galaxie Twelve, mentioning my "realization" and stating that I no doubt believe the cops already made the connection, but I thought it was worth writing in. A week later, I received a response to "Wayne Saller" thanking me for my letter and that the detectives had indeed followed up on the lead. I recall exactly how the following moments went, like a scene in a film. My father was in the backyard, wearing his t-shirt bandana, trimming hedges. I showed him the letter, he read it, looked up at me and said, quite seriously "You know this means that they have you on their list of suspects, don't you?" Well, Wayne Saller, at least. But the deadpan way my father delivered that line. The bottom photo was taken in Waynesboro VA at Beth Massie's house, during a weekend gathering of writers like Brian Hodge, David Niall Wilson, and Mark Stephen Rainey. The cop was a friend of the family and I thought a funny photo would be of me cuffed on the ground. I'm not really mugging it up with my expression, because the cop lifted me off the ground by lifting the cuffs between my wrists as we posed for three takes. I still intend to use the photo in a memoir or, hell, a simple author photo. The fake mug shot is one of my cut & paste with scissors & tape deals, there used to be a great photo booth in the Woolworth's on State Street. I could make my hair look like that just by moving my hand over my forehead. If I used a comb, that hair would fall out. It was a time of Larry King-brand prescription glasses and strands of hair on my typewriter keyboard...bad eyes, bad hair, what you gonna do?

Evil Happy Smiley Face Man

From my May 28th entry for Storytellers Unplugged


Evil Happy Smiley Face Man
by Wayne Allen Sallee


Got laid off from my job last week. Just saying, is all. Three years back, I found myself writing all sorts of things I never did before, so watch out for big things this time. A Robert Mitchum superhero comic! A musical based on Abe Vigoda! MooTube! And whatever else I can think of before the meds wear off. I’m leading towards something here, just bear with me. Remember, I’m the guy without the driver’s license, so you have to stroll aimlessly with me for a few paragraphs. One thing that I foresee happening is that, until I’m working full-time again, is that I’ll be on the Internet more often. Christ knows, that’s how people look for jobs these days. The thing I heard most often in the summer of 2005 when I was downtown job hunting was “we don’t take walk-ins.” Not even when I was wearing my cheery Universal Monsters or Dogs Playing Poker ties. I found temp work counting light bulbs and a tiny, blurry part in THE WEATHERMAN on Craigslist, but also found a few writing gigs.

I watched DIARY OF THE DEAD last night because, well, when you are unemployed what’s the first thing you think of besides zombies? The film wasn’t good at all, except in a cheesy PLANET TERROR meets NIGHT OF THE CREEPS kind of way, but I found it interesting to change the use of the camera for documentary from THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT to–in a lesser extent–filming the zombie “coverup” and putting it online. (Hmmnnn. GrueTube. Thought of it first. Just now.) I think the film was a weak effort capitalizing on the upcoming WORLD WAR Z, based on the book by Max Brooks, which has a very compelling passage involving a computer geek in Japan who spends days online learning and sharing everything about the “African rabies,” and finding more and more of his friends no longer being online.

I’m in a bit of a pickle because of my personal blog, Frankenstein1959. (Not the one with the hentai penguins, that’s a different one). I had been mentioning a high school buddy by name in the Technorati tags–something that always makes me think that’s something on Iron Man’s facial armor–in, well, three entries in over three hundred total entries. His goofball wife (I’m describing her shape, not mentality) has started a business and has somehow made the assumption if people Google her, then her husband, they will see the blog entries and worse yet...the blog. She is applying for grants, you see. I can assume how heartless it must be to read of a friend visiting me in the hospital after the car accident: GRANT DENIED! It didn’t take long to adjust my blog, but I feel as if I’ve erased my decades long friendship along with the Technorati tags.

Evil Happy Smiley Face Man. Anyone been reading about this? A retired New York cop made a connection in 40 unsolved deaths, all college men, all drowned, in 12 states going back a decade. One of the deaths occurred here, and proves as an example why murder was never suspected. A guy from the wedding party at a hotel downtown went walking off a little bit drunk and was last seen by the hotel doorman. His body washed up on a beach near Michigan City almost four months later. Many of the drownings are clustered around Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and the cop who has been in the news had been investigating an Albany college kid who disappeared after a Hallowe’en party in Minneapolis. Tracing the bodies to the probable point they had entered the water–the guy from the wedding here was assumed to have simply toppled over a railing into the Chicago River and the currents did the rest–police found smiley faces carved in tree trunks, spray-painted on glass or brick, and chalked on boulders. In some cases, words assumed to be gang slogans were found nearby. The break occurred when the Albany copy found that a word scrawled near where the body was found in the Mississippi matched the street name that ran along a small creek in Iowa where another body was found. All of the deaths are still considered drownings, not homicides, but police are putting together a theory on how the crimes are being committed. Via the Internet. They are putting credence into the idea that there is a group of people orchestrating each death by staying in touch before and after each death. Posting code words like Sixth Street or photos of their smiley face postings. I can see the Craiglist classifieds in seemingly innocent verbiage. A perfect way to commit serial murder, if you think about it. Never mind the evil twin from the Michael Slade novel, the competing killers in KISS THE GIRLS, or the cousins who combined were The Hillside Strangler in Los Angeles. Hell, I even wrote a novella called DRINKING BUDDIES back in the day, about two serial killers who would periodically meet over beers and play catch-up. The tag was that there was a third guy in the bar, a serial killer who killed other serial killers, long before DEXTER showed up, but let’s face facts. Much of what I wrote in the 1980s could not be considered stellar material. But with the access I have in front of me to different newsgroups and message boards, why would I need to go to a tavern to compare notes with Every Mother’s Son or the BTK Strangler? I find the entire Evil Happy Smiley Face case fascinating, and not in a morbid way. As I’m typing this now, someone in another state bordering the Mississippi or Ohio is reading about upcoming parties or weddings and his buddies are doing the same. Who knows how many are involved here, in the event of any single person being caught, odds are most of his interstate accomplices are simply faceless avatars on a computer screen. Murder has just gotten more anonymous.

Curse Of The Four Sticks, Redux

I've posted the shot of my royalty check before. I had scanned the time card from my old job a few months back, waiting for the eventual Four Sticks Curse to rear up again. At this point, though, not being at that particular job, I thought it might be a cool idea to include a bottle of 11-11 Malt Liquor. Yin and yang, good karma and bad. The reason I finally found a reason to post on the curse, the origin of which can be found by clicking my previous links below, is because, yes, the numbers have shown up again. This isn't a Hurley on LOST/numbers station listening post kinda thing going. In short, once someone is told about the Four Sticks, they will appear in your life when least expected. For no reason. Case in point, the following excerpt from an article I was using for research:



Grand jury lifting veil on unsolved mob hits
By Rick Jervis and Liam Ford, Tribune staff reporters. Tribune staff reporters Ray Gibson and Art Barnum contributed to this report

January 23, 2005

Joseph "the Clown" Lombardo was at a workbench in his small Near West Side shop, where masonry saws and tools are sharpened, when 10 federal agents swarmed in.

One agent waved a grand jury warrant, another carried a cotton swab. The agents dabbed the inside of Lombardo's mouth with the swab--gathering DNA--and were gone in less than two minutes.

Lombardo, a longtime Chicago Outfit leader who publicly swore off his mob ties after being released from prison in 1992, is one of more than a dozen mob bosses and associates who are subjects of a new federal probe into long-dormant mob murders, some dating as far back as three decades.

A federal grand jury is investigating at least 16 unsolved killings, making it one of the biggest law-enforcement strikes against organized crime in Chicago history. Sources close to the investigation--dubbed Operation Family Secrets--and attorneys for some of the alleged mob members say they expect the grand jury to hand up indictments as early as next month.

Convictions on this scale would be unprecedented. The Chicago Crime Commission counts 1,111 Chicago-area gangland slayings since 1919, but only 14 have ended in murder convictions and three cases were cleared when the suspected killers were murdered before being arrested, according to the commission.

Why not just say over a thousand? Why not round it off to Eleven hundred? ts because complete strangers are trying to drive me mad in the past, present, and very likely in the future, coming up with ways for the damnable sequence of ones to show up again and again...Wayne

Memorial Day Background Checks

I like this photo, which was taken during the summer of 2005. Look close and you can see the nearly full moon. We have had a flag in view since 9/11, but we've always flown one on Memorial Day. My dad was in Korea as a decoder. I have cousins that are retired military and who have sons in places they never should have to be in. I thought this year I'd find a photo of the flag on the moon with our planet in the background, the whole mirror image thing, but I came across that third photo. There are more important things to show with a flag in the foreground on Memorial Day, of all days. The moon will be there forever. I leave the final words, again, to Sgt. Rock of Easy Company...Rest easy, servicemen and veterans. Wayne

Loose Ends On Lost Friends

Before I get back to my light holiday reading, I need to follow up on my cryptic email about losing a friendship because of, believe it or not, this very blog. Several people emailed or commented about the identity of this "B-movie actress" asnd I replied anti-Vampira. Imagine Vampira if she had swallowed Abe Vigoda whole. Yea, there you go. Never mind ten, fifteen years ago, when this woman basically caused a rift between my friend--I'll now have to call him Rumpelstilskin Wojiehowicz--and his family over, well, lots of things. One of my friends in Ty--, um, the biggest city on the third planet from Proxima Centauri recalled the various times I had mentioned the many times ol' Rumple and I had to cancel plans because his wife found some lame-ass excuse to keep him home. (The guy is one of the most patient people I know on this Earth.) Well, the Bride of The Mummy started a neuropathy clinic in the rich suburb of Naperville awhile back and is now trying to get grants, and if you Googled her husband...you get the idea now. Three mentions in over 200 posts, all involving Chicago history or our shared history. Somehow, the Witch Queen of New Orleans thinks that she will be denied grants if someone sees the Frankenstein1959 blog and was already sputtering the way only monsters can sputter about going to court. So I spent the week removing my friend's name from the blog labels, removing all ties to our friendship at the same time. Thanks to The Wasp Woman, I'll have to call all of you by different names now, as well. Xenophanes Girdleberg will now be Sid Williams, Grendel Ellis will be James Robert Smith, Cherry Poptart will be Steve Malley, Clint Barcode will be Mike Fountain and on down the line. I used to have such a colorful buddylist. OK, OK, I'll even change Wendell Whitebread to Charles Gramlich. All to placate some hag that pours acid down the hollowed out pumpkin head of every person she meets.

Back To The Sweet Lowdown

Well, I'm back to taking crappy job as Jonny Algiers, looking for women in faded photos pretending to drive a car by asking the bus driver if I can sit up right behind her as we move through the sludge of the city streets. No more of the south suburbs misery. Thanks for those who have blogged or email me about my job loss. I came out of the last two years now knowing a trade, after having been sitting behind a desk for most of my adult life. The two years I was at the plant put me a position I never expected I'd be in, running some jobs by adapting with resources at hand because of being on the midnight shift, reeking of ink in my leather jacket and numerous t-shirts. More upper body weight I can't let go to Half Century Man flab. I took the train downtown today, mostly just to wander on a sunny, cloudless day and snap some photos of buildings in the process of being doomed. On the way down the winding Orange Line, I saw the familiar Wheatland Tube Company, the paper company with their banner at 2249 So. Canal. A whole different set of jobs I can apply for that I never could have two years ago. (Should I need to go undercover as Jonny Algiers as a page laminator, of course). I'll get in the groove I did during the very hot summer of 05, where I similarly adapted by writing nonfiction and concorcodances for the TV show LOST and tributes to one of my mentors, Evan Hunter. I've always lived near the lower class, never making more than $30,000 a year and having medical bills and prescriptions eating up more of that than I'd like to think, and this was even when I had health insurance. I've had mixed feelings today compared to yesterday in regards to the unemployment. Maybe because when I lost my job in 05, it was the ass end of winter, and now its the beginning of summer, a season I've always been detached from as I live my secluded little life. I'll continue to read a bit tomorrow, concentrate on writing by Monday, and take it from there. That's what most private investigators do, anyways, particularly when they are still on dial-up...Wayne

Return To The Wandering Crazed

I did have plans for a different kind of follow-up on my blog last night, particularly in the type of killing that Dann did, even though she was never a mass murderer, it wasn't for lack of trying that day. The gun jammed in the hallway. She hit two other kids. I was going to talk about, well, I still intend to talk about the subject, rather a specific instance which only yesterday was making the news. But I was laid off from work yesterday, as well. The newer color digital printer was cheaper to run than the old color thingamajig, so that makes two out of two machines I had learned as my own shipped out the door, and I'm low man on the totem pole in regards to the other three machines). Got up early and hit the streets; oddly, the unemployment (or the Department of Public Works, if I for some reason ever needed to visit there), is one of the few places I have to walk to in a zigzag fashion, over railroad tracks on the very outskirts of "old" Burbank on a pretty much dead-end street. I wanted to get it over with before the holiday weekend; coincidentally, it was two years ago today that I was hired. I believe the night shift was let go yesterday (or today) as well, but I do know that I made it through 14 firings since the beginning of the year (I was laid off simply because I was a temp through a staffing company, and so it was like not getting my contract renewed). A few people were teary or, in the case of the pressmen, wide-eyed in the sad not surprised look. Yes, that is my description of a Seasoned Yet Sad Pressman. I don't know that I'll actually work with any group of people that were so agreeable and just plain fun to be with. Now its time to pull my old monkey suits and graveyard ties out of the closet and start hunting, but not just yet. I have a few weeks coming and the unemployment guy guaranteed I'll get my first check in two weeks. What does this mean now? More walking down rainy streets. More writing with my quill pen dipped in the blood of...well, OK, Hunt's catsup. (Might as well be watered down blood). And, of course, getting into rooftop fights in my guise as Jonny Algiers, Private Eye. Your chattel, Wayne

Hubbards Woods Elementary, 20 Years Ago Today

I was in Nashville for Kubla-Con (yea, I know), hanging out with the then-unknown artist Alan Clark and the late Jack Hunter Daves (who is forever alive in THE HOLY TERROR as the 1st District Lt. Det. investigating the Painkillings). I was on the phone with my mother, she had this old RCA TV on the kitchen counter on. As we were talking, you could hear this Breaking News!!! voice over much unlike sound effects you might hear today on CNN or FoxNews. You can look Laurie Dann up on Wikipedia, there was a pretty detailed book about her, but what she is known for is shooting an eight year old boy at the Hubbards Woods Elementary School in Winnetka. She had been declared mentally unstable, put poison into packets of cereal to send to parents of kids she had babysat. The entire sequence of events twenty years ago today seem totally random, where she went, why she snapped, why then, why there. She left the school and went to a nearby house, shooting one other person before killing herself. Sadly, these days a person would likely kill dozens before committing suicide.

Cathy Crowell Webb died of cancer today. Back ion the late 70s, she accused Gary Dotson of rape, and he eventually went to prison for, well, too many years. Webb recanted, and this was the first case in the US in which DNA testing factored into the retrial and acquittal. Strange that if Webb hadn't died today, both her and Dotson would be distant memories, even the fact involving the DNA testing would be lost to me. Yet I recall hearing my own beat up television set back on 85th Street as my mother watched in silence, little kids carried out on stretchers in a north suburb of Chicago. Before helicopter cams and all the bullshit sound bites we get shoved at us now. Simply camera vans and reporters attempting to describe in the best way they can what had just occurred at the Hubbard Woods Elementary School.

Good Thing I Didn't Post A Unicorn Pissing Rainbows

Long story short, I lost a good friend today. Thirty years of friendship gone because of his B-movie horror film wife. I'll not go into particulars only because the vindictive bitch seems to enjoy lawsuits and I sure as hell would hate to see her in court, the B-movie actor's best friend said sarcastically. I'm venting, really, and I have no reason to do a play-by-play of this mess of a day. At the end of it all, I no longer have who had been one of my closest buddies, because I cannot stomach what his wife involved herself with earlier today. But for those of you who wish to comment, I do indeed have an illustration of a unicorn pissing rainbows...Wayne

End Of The Line

Who'd Have Thought?

I Want To Be Evil

OK, it fell out like this. I'm looking through the bookshelf that has all the magazines and comics I'm in, trying to find AFTER HOURS#25 so I can read "Augusta Boulevard, Sunday Afternoon" at TwilightTales tomorrow. And what did I find? My long lost Eartha Kitt CD. I've been playing it for hours because it gives me memories of years gone by. As I type this, she's singing "Santa, Baby" (half a century ago!), but I won't skip past it, even though I despise winter. I'm also past my meeting with destiny. I walked to see Jessica today, gave her my speech that would have worked better Friday, plus she has my phone number and email. I made her smile in a way I've never seen before, so I know she knows I know she's thinking about whatever the hell it was I said to her. But. God help me, she was born the year my first story was reprinted in Year's Best Horror:XIV. I'm turning into Philip K. Dick. Where have the years gone? 50 years since Eartha Kitt sang "C'est Si Bon" and "I Want To Be Evil." I feel like walking the streets at night like Rorschach from WATCHMEN, asking people when I got so old...Wayne

The Things We Do For Memes

Well, my good buddy Sid has hit me with a meme, this one involves me explaining six unremarkable quirks about me (as if anything about me is a secret by now) and then "tagging" six others, which I plan to do by hitting Next Blog Over six times. If it doesn't translate into Malaysian, its not like I didn't try something there, right. Unremarkable equals watching the Hallmark Movie Channel, so I'll need to put my spin on this. Can't talk about things I'll go into in bigger length on the blog, like the time I got into a car in 1992 with a guy I am now completely certain was a child molester, or my coming this close to leaving Chicago for Denver because it was better than spending $322.00 on the phone bill each month. Or things that will happen in the near future, like my explaining to Jessica exactly what Martian hypno-breath is. I can't very much list things in the meme like my man-crush on Kurt Russell or my curiosity towards hentai penguins OR dolphins. So I'll just come up with the usual crazy shit that is in my head and keep the six items to a few words, in no particular order.

1. I talk to animals as if they were human beings, which at times confuses my father if his hearing aids are not in.
2. I talk out loud to myself in public, now I am able to pretend I am talking on a cell phone if people don't look close enough. You've seen my face. Who in their right mind looks close enough?
3. I'd like to shoot a game of pool with Sean Connery.
4. I've seen ghosts. Not just when I'm on OR off my various medications.
5. I hate myself for it, but I am constantly envious of anybody who can do things using both hands. (Selfish, I know). Typing, emptying bags, having a threesome, as Rodney Dangerfield once bragged, like that.
6. I believe that I will be better known once I am dead, somewhere between King Tut and Larry Fine of the Three Stooges on The Recognition Scale.

And there you have it. Back to my semi-regularly scheduled madness later. There's always http://bobbythemitch.blogspot.com if you are still bored, wink wink. Or Google hentai dolphins, because, well, you know you want to....Wayne

Pay No Attention To The Man In The Hound Dog Suit

Well, I really did attempt to meet my destiny tonight, but Jessica was not working. She'll be there Sunday, I think that's how the pattern works in the past. (No, I don't LIVE at the Walgreens, it's just the closest place for buying household items on the cheap, and its walking distance for a pedestrian like me). If I was overly self-indulgent last night, well, I don't know if I have apologies or not. I should, but at the same time, anyone could have hit click like they do when they find out they found Nancy Grace making mad, mad octopus love to Anderson Cooper on some crazy Twilight Zone channel. Swell, I might watch a FEW minutes before I clicked off, but that's just me. Gang, I'm just not this way every year, with the coming of warmer weather. I get away without thinking about any single particular female for years. Then out of nowhere, self-confidence visits and I start thinking what the hell. Bart at work tells me maybe I should look for women my own age, and, well, for one, I'd have to excavate some mummies and two, I have absolutely no understanding of how to do this. I NEVER run into single women my own age. Could it be my crazy John Locke look above that keeps some of my friends from setting up blind dates? Or when I'm at the Delta Lounge--cue the BARFLY music--and actually do strike up a conversation with someone born before the first moon walk? Back to my now-postponed meeting with destiny, I did take some time to talk with Erica, who works with Jessica quite often. Erica told me that J. sees a guy on and off, nothing serious, other than, say, he's not twice her age (that's me thinking aloud now). But Erica plans to help out by telling Jessica, until I see her again, about what a nice and cool guy I am, and how I once saved a street mugging using my martian hypno-breath and saved a busload of nuns by lifting them over a burning fence using only my eyebrows. Yea, that will certainly make Jessica think that I'm the catch of the century. What I had in hand, still have, in case I see her Sunday, is the Weekend section of the Sun-Times. I intend to lay it out simple, and tell her, if there is anything, ANYthing, in those pages that she wants to do, has always wanted to do, but some guy or her friends weren't into it (Navy Pier, Millennium Park, taking the el, with all the bacteria on the passengers, yea, like not driving a car means you suddenly end up in a scene from SOYLENT GREEN), that I would gladly accompany her to the event. A chick flick, sure. Some play at the Cadillac Palace that I'd spend a week's pay on, certainly. My plan just might work. If not, its back to what I normally do, write while I stare at my skull reflection and my odd collection of action figures just to the right of me, on my bookshelf. Again, thanks for commenting on my blog, each of you, instead of watching Nancy Grace doing that hentai thing on half the CNN staff. (The sequel's next summer...)

Bobby The Mitch

I have another blog on which I post photos of the big guy, Robert Mitchum. http://bobbythemitch.blogspot.com. Just something to do. He was in BLOOD ON THE MOON, considered to be the first crime noir western. If I could type faster, I would suggest to my agent that I might rite a series of Bobby the Mitch mysteries; Mitch often chose the films he starred in for their locations to fishing spots. He drank and filming ended early. My take is that Mitch took the rolls in the areas where a murder had occurred, the fake drinking makes for him to work nights solving the crimes. Some guy did a series of Elvis mysteries--one was BLUE SUEDE CLUES--I think I have a much better take on things. But, see, I can't type fast. The body is falling apart, I cannot use the voice Activation because of tremors in my mouth. I am angry as all hell at myself tonight, folks. I haven't asked Jessica at the Walgreen's pharmacy out yet because I'm still in carnival freak mode. I hurt all the time, it never stops. I lie to people when I say I am fine. The bipolar meds are fine, the one day of the month I feel suicidal was Monday, so I'm cool. I just rode those waves. ..... My father is Robert Mitchum, he heard that from our doctor's wife decades ago, fellow cops told him, it was either Mitch or James Rockford. How the hell did he end up with a son who looks like fucking Frankenstein? I added a shot of me waiting for the bus at 147th Street, ha ha ha. I'll ask Jessica tomorrow, it needs to be done, better or worse. But I am totally pissed off at myself in a way that is difficult to put into words. Believe it or not, I'm quite happy with my life today. So what the hell am I burdening you guys for? Go check out Bobby The Mitch. He's the one with no problems at all...Wayne

Fly Me To The Tomb!

I still cut & paste, computers be damned. Frank Sinatra has been dead ten years ago today. The kind of crappy third generation photocopy of me and Steve Beai when I was known as Time King (long story) goes back to a photo used in Sammy Davis Jr.'s obit. The others are just me goofing with the copier and scanner. For the record, I was never much of a Sinatra fan, more a Dean Martin kinda guy. In the cool, cool, cool, of the evening, stick em on my hair, in the shank of the night, if the doin's are right, you can tell 'em I'll be there...(and if anyone asks, this is indeed where I got my story title "Shank of The Night." Not from a Kid Rock song). But, man, I was all misty-eyed when Robert Mitchum took the big dirt nap...Wayne

Howling At The Moon

Back to the rain today. Pictured is one of the intersections from where I usually stand (or sit) after getting dropped off by different people at work. Yesterday, I looked above me and saw the faintest of moons, much like in the first photo. Contrails passed in front of it and gulls cawed nearby. Fuck it, I hit the back space button. No one cares how crappy my day at work was, this isn't one of those got-damn whiny blogs. Regardless, I did leave work two hours late, catching the very beginning of the storm (the other photos go back maybe two weeks), but I was in no real mood to go into the Walgreen's to pick up one of my prescriptions, because even if I did by chance not scare Jessica off with my banter last Friday, I really had nothing to say, which shows how ridiculous my mind works. Yesterday I was more poetic as I sat by the bus stop, and I thought about NOT thinking about being near the same dead end street where Walking Mike had been thrown into the weeds after a hit and run, or that a prostitute was found strangled behind the hotel. I can't think about a hell of a lot in the world to feel good about lately, between tornadoes and earthquakes in China and the typhoon in Myanmar that killed all the wrong people, not the assholes who run the damn country. Gas prices, food prices, my hourly wage as I near my role as Half-Century Man. I looked away from all that, up at the contrails, trying to spot the first faint star, thinking that I'd simply be happy to have someone sitting next to me, staring up at the same moon I am. That's all....Wayne

Crippled and Insane...

Yes, those three words have long been my description in a nutshell (pun intended). Today, I received the galley copy of the anniversary edition of THE HOLY TERROR. One thing I like about it, aside from that it is finally an affordable trade, is that the cover copy focuses on The American Dream. He's one of the most remembered of my recurring characters, even though I never devoted more than a handful of stories about him. His appearance in the book was almost an afterthought, I had intended to simply focus on Vic Tremble, Francis Madsen Haid, and wheelchair-bound Mike Surfer. The Dream seemed to eclipse the other characters.

I dedicated this book, in part, to the memory of my namesake, my father's high school buddy Wayne Henley. I received the package containing the galley this evening. Around 1:00 this morning, Wayne's son Jeff emailed from his second shift job down in Kentucky, reminding me to give his daddy a chin nod because today would have been his 75th birthday...Wayne