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