ABE VIGODA

Don't Mess With Phil Fish!!!

Fishnets For Vigoda!

As I mentioned in my mass email earlier today, G.W. Ferguson and I have decided to get an Abe Vigoda Posse going, and by having as many people post "Fishnets For Vigoda" along with the photo above, well, maybe we can get a huge hit on the Googleometer. The guy deserves the fame, folks. I've got a link to his personal blog, which is updated every day just to state that he is still alive. Mind you, I was sad when Jerry Orbach died, and I'm certain Sid Ceaser will go soon. But I wish the best to Mr. Vigoda, that he makes it another fourteen years, hits the age of 100, and is guest of honor at the Chicago Summer Olympics in 2016 along the way. (On the downside, I can say that I'm more than HALF Abe Vigoda's age. The humanity!). Please read this, pass it on, and tell all of your personal commenters to post FFV on their blog. Thanks, gang. I have photos from this week's Twilight Tales readings and will post them tonight or tomorrow...Wayne

All The News That's Print To Fit

The heat index hit 95 today and so I thought what better thing to do than get six hours of sleep and then walk to the bus stop eating a mini-bagel, then realizing I forgot my bottled water. I had to go to my crazy doctor today, not that he is crazy, rather everyone who sees him is crazy. I just gets my three month scrip for the bipolar meds, swipe a few pens (because that's the way I roll), and pony up twenty dollars because I guess I have that doe-eyed killer clown look that causes doctors to feel sorry that I have no medical insurance and not charge me trillions of dollars like a few of the other patients. Then I went downtown, just because I wanted to continue to swelter and get occasional whiffs of bachelor ass on the train--the effect is that of smelling salts--and visit Graham Cracker comics. Trailer Park of Terror Earl had called to tell me I had a DC Archive book that came in, and I grabbed a few Onions. Then I went and saw The Dark Knight. I have never seen a Batman film in the theaters, I get enough angst-ridden hitched dialogue when I'm talking to myself in the mirror. Well, a few weeks back, a friend commented on how he could not believe that Heath Ledger was that THING. And yet I was still taken aback, at times trying to see the actor under the makeup. The tongue darting towards his scars, the greasy hair. I couldn't do it. Seriously, if I had been in space for the last several years (not an unlikely possibility) and I saw the film (back on Earth) and was asked who played Joker, well, I'd have needed several dozen guesses, after ruling out the obvious, Ernest Borgnine, Abe Vigoda, either of the Olsen twins, Mr. Food. The film itself was OK, like I said, I'm not that big on Batman. But sonovabitch. Best Joker ever. Now I'm taking it easy and catching up on my reading. The doomed planet headline just gets funnier when you read that the Al was using his "given name" of Gore-Al (Superman is Kal-El, Son of Jor-El, Grandson of Sunn-El, yep I'm a geek). A fun day. And I didn't almost electrocute myself once...Wayne

The Dillinger Shots

An hour into my day, I watched a guy on methadone arguing with a heroin addict over a crate to beg from in front of the Old Navy downtown. There's a lot more after that, and I might just write a story to read next Monday at the Mystic Celt, the new place for the Twilight Tales readings. Photos on the next roll, the ones just developed are from the Dillinger shoot. I only took a few photos; spent more time talking cop with a guy whose dad, also a cop, was an extra in the BLUES BROTHERS film way back in August of 1979. The scene is underneath the Red Line, crossing Clark Street towards Addison. At times, I'll sit at that el stop, watching part of the Cubs game, seeing only a sliver of right and center field, but I don't care because the background noise helps me write in my commonplace book. That shot underneath the el has some cool stores just out of site. There's BOOKWORKS, and no more need be said. Years back, I bought a pb of Nelson Algren's NEVER COME MORNING. Past that is STRANGE CARGO, where you can buy Doc Marten boots, Starsky & Hutch t-shirts, and postcards of Abe Vigoda, bobble heads of everything iconic, packs of trading cards with stale bubble gum of HAPPY DAYS, T.J. HOOKER, PEEWEE'S PLAYHOUSE, and even SAVED BY THE BELL. And past that, sigh, is Wrigley Field and all the sports bars (not taverns, never call them taverns), and people walking the streets that I really don't give a damn about. Anyhow, here's 1932 Chicago. If Dillinger wasn't doomed here, I doubt anyone outside of Kansas City or Crown Point, Indiana would know of him. Like James Dean's grave. And the rumour of Jonny D.'s penis in formaldehyde...Wayne

Mid-Life Career Changes

Hey, at one point I was going to be Slappy the clown before getting my last job literally a day before my being fitted for a clown costume. Now I am again looking for work, and two things I found I might do would be to sketch nudes of Abe Vigoda and then sell them on eBay or make lamps out of dead squirrels, hey, the information is all right there, people. Maybe I'll become a radio technician and scowl and have wavy hair like the guy in the 1940 ad above. Its the back cover of my oldest comic, BLUE BEETLE#6. The back up features were Dynamite Thor and Sub Saunders, but nobody was fighting the Nazis or the Japanese because we weren't in WWII yet. No ads for war bonds or paper drives. Yet every other issue I have of the Golden Age Blue Beetle will have every story centered around fighting the real villains of the 1940s, except for a few issues when BB went to Saturn. I still love that ad, though. The guy was making more than twice his salary and looking like someone just made him sniff a dirty cold medina right before the flashbulb went off. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going out in the rain to look for squirrels...Wayne

Do Not Mistake Coincidence For Fate, i.e., Living La Vida Loca!

That first line was something Mr. Eko said to John Locke on LOST and it does (kinda) tie in here. While I was unemployed in the spring of 2006, making tiny amounts of money from my royalty checks and posing with my cerebral palsy "look" for a medical stock photo place up north, I came across my guilty pleasure. Everyone has one. Maybe for you its Miller High Life, the Champagne of Beers, or sweet, sweet octopus love. For me, back in that cruel winter just two years back, I started watching DANCING WITH THE STARS. Stop laughing. I watched because of Stacy Keibler. Those who know me know that any woman who has a cleft in her chin or swears in Polish can have my heart. I never knew about dances like the posa dobre, but to see Stacy tango or cha cha, gaah. Well, they ran the top ten dances from the first five seasons tonight--please note that I have not watched the show since Stacy came in third, and will not unless Abe Vigoda or Bob Newhart cowboy up for the slow dancing--and hours later I still cannot get that damn Ricky Martin song out of my head. Mother of mercy, save us. The top photo is Stacy and her professional dance partner, Tony Provolone or Toblerone, something like that. Then there's more Stacy, then there's Stacy as Catwoman, and then...there's Catwoman from the comics, Selina Kyle as drawn by Adam Hughes, holding a mug shot card with The Numbers (from LOST and my last post) on them. Coincidence? When I went to Google images, I never expected to find Catwoman Stacy on the 1,400 pages I, ah, randomly checked. Then when I went to find a funny ending for this post, hoping for a shot of Abe Vigoda as Catwoman (or maybe Poison Ivy...oooh, the possibilities), I cam across the artwork posted. Coincidence? Fate? Determinism? Reality-check? (As in, Wayne, you are never going to meet her, hell, you won't even meet Abe Vigoda OR Bob Newhart, either, so let it go already). Yea, yea, yea. Still hearing that song in my head, though. And...well...

YBH Complete

These are the covers to the YEAR'S BEST HORROR that I am in, the last nine before Karl died. Wagner was cool enough to get strings pulled so that my name appeared on the back cover of the final edition. I added the other image as an after thought, mostly because it is also shaped roughly the same, and also because it is below zero outside and I don't really want to be typing. When its this cold, even voice activation might not work. My cheeks are so cold that I sound like Abe Vigoda if I say anything at all...

Bruce Willis Hit By A Disfiguring Ray

There's always been talk that when I shave my head I can look like a decent Bruce Willis, but with sunken cheeks. I blame that on the four bottom teeth I knocked out with my own fist from my broken arm, after I was hit by the car in 1989. In 2002, when we hosted the World Horror Convention, I put in my bio that I'd be the guy looking like Willis hit by a disfiguring ray. That quote still is bandied about at different get-togethers. Myself, I see Andy Sipowicz's bags under my eyes and Abe Vigoda's crooked nostrils. Willis is the man, and I my guilty pleasure is a Kurt Russell film, but one thing I can say, I can never be compared to Mitchum. It all comes back to him...Wayne