Pigeons Quoting & Graffiti

The pigeons are in that park where the big eye used to be and the graffiti was on one block around the Red Lion and on the ceiling of the Red Line train, of all places.

Ravenswood At Dusk

I was walking up Lincoln when I took these shots, right when the tracks leave Fullerton. I walked down Montana and ended up under the tracks. A half block up, I saw this apartment complex I've seen from the el for years, the train curves a bit around a tennis court. I climbed this really shitty fire escape just high enough to get the first shot. When I walked back to Lincoln, on the opposite side of the street, I saw Lill. This is only about a block and a half east-west, and I always remember that street because of a cop killing, a domestic call on Mother's Day, back in the 90s. Cops hate domestic calls. And here's the lion on the Red Lion with a cool shot of the upstairs room with the red interior. I really do miss the place.

Stomach Steinways

Dick Contino called his accordian a stomach Steinway. I need to write about Dick one day. Google him. He's in Chicago for local summerfests. Neat guy. Anyhow. This fellow was in front of the Borders across from the Chicago Theater last Monday. I stopped there on my way to the readings, just to see what is on the shelves to further depress myself. This fellow wasn't out front when I walked in, and as I walked out I thought maybe a falling brick had hit me in the head. From far away, I honestly thought I was looking at Cab Calloway. After realizing this was not the case, I talked with him a bit. He's up here from Alabama, for who knows what reason, it being below zero and all. I asked him if he could try "Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone" and he actually came up with a good, if somwhat (and expected ) jaunty version of it. I handed him a fiver and as I walked down the steps to the subway I could hear regular polka music floating over my head. Later, I walked over to the Red Lion, our old haunt, because someone told me that it was boarded up even more securely. I took a phjoto once I saw the smiley face on it, but with the photo developed, it seems I caught a ghost on film. Or maybe just some tall guy smoking an unfiltered Pall Mall exhaling as he leaned over my shoulder. What do I know? I was cold.

The Suicide Window

One day I'll write a story called "The Suicide Window." Before Castle Frankenstein was built next door, I could see from my sleeping room to the far end of the block and the apartment buildings on 87th Street. Not quite like REAR WINDOW, more blotches of white behind trees and my neighbors' garages. But one building always had a light on in one window, and it never went off until well after dawn. It might have been a hallway security light, being on the top floor, but it spooked the hell out of me. Before I started my bipolar meds, sleep was non-existent. I would sit and stare at the square of yellow while the 2006 Winter Olympics hummed quietly in the other room. I saw a painting online that made me think of my story, which basically is one where the only people who can see the light in the window are those that commit suicide, and within two pages, I saw the quality of the paintings shown (NOT by the same artists) nosedive. The Nixon one baffles me. I found quite a few robot paintings, and I might post a few at a later date. To end this time, here I am as painted by Rick Therrio, whose link can be found to the left. I actually had a shirt with the pattern Rick painted--he sketched it as I was reading at the Red Lion back around 1996--one of those items of clothing I never wanted to part with. Things happen that involve bleach, sadly....Wayne

Back In My Madhouse

Hard to believe I haven't been downtown since November. I chaperoned my niece and her friends to see RENT at the Cadillac Palace, taking them on the el, then scooting off for the next two hours. Took the Red Line to the Red Lion, closed but not yet demolished. Took a photo of the faded Crest sign where the also closed 3 Penny Cinema was. Watched a guy sit for about twenty minutes in front of the State of Illinois Building. He wasn't begging, though there were many others on the streets. This guy just seemed lonely and lost. A few blocks over a guy ate pizza from a box in a garbage can, then huddled under a Northwestern University blanket pulled up to his nose. My favorite moment was walking through a very cool section of the subway, near Jackson Boulevard. Anybody could be around that corner. A cool place for a showdown, the famous, final scene. But I had to chaperone the girls back, so this was not the day for adventure....Wayne

Things I Have Shouted At My Computer, And Other Catchy Phrases

Bob, Charles, and Lana loved that last post, so I thought I'd add a few others from my folder called Pulp Fiction, a catch-all for book covers, videos, movie lobby cards, and, oddly, ads for the 1964 Plymouth Wildcat. Bob mentioned all the books he had to toss back in the day, and I can only imagine a literary career of knocking out 140 page novels about craziness. Hopped up on the goopy gop and Kickapoo Joy Juice, the latter a now-defunct drink in Kentucky (the state that also still gives us Laughing Cow butter pats), and writing things that made no sense past the moment the words were manually typed. But hey, the book titles were cool, and I'm certain the writers had fun knocking the books out Zebra and Pinnacle style, only with less pages and thus less crap to clomp through. (I am of course excluding books by Sid Williams and the Usual Suspects, even THE BREEZE HORROR had its moments). I had more titles before my hard drive crashed in September, like LOVE CAMP ON WHEELS, THE NEIGHBORS SUCK AND SO DO WE, BAYOU GIRL, and THE DEAD DARLING. Quite a few of these I picked up at the long gone Bookseller's Row, across from the Red Lion, after PULP FICTION was released in theaters. They had a sign in the window that pretty much said WE HAVE YOUR REAL PULP FICTION RIGHT HERE! And, as stated in my blog title, you can likely pick out the phrases I call my computer, hissing under my breath like a guy ready to pull the trigger. Oh, an aside here, I was interviewed once and mention a phrase, "Skull Carpenters", which I made into a story that appeared in WITH WOUNDS STILL WET. When the interview saw print in LACUNAE#8, the book was transcribed as THE GODS ATE CANDY. I can only imagine what the hell readers thought I had in my library...BUDDHA EATS PASTA, GANESHA'S COTTON CANDY ADVENTURE, HORTON EATS A HO-HO...Wayne

From HEF For WAS 2007, and in 1997

Harry Fassl (and his sweetheart Diana Gallardo) presented me with the above when I was doing a reading at the Red Lion in October of 97, a belated birthday present. This is what he emailed me after reading my Perdition blog entry...

Fingers Like Nosferatu

Body by Baron Victor Von F
Luck by Loki
Going forward by day and night.
American Dreamer
Algerian Detective
Holed up on Desolation Row
In the Heartbreak Hotel.
Where less brave spirits have checked out long ago.
His voice sounds there still.
Disturbing the dust, and any who would dare listen.


HEF
(For WAS - 2007)

Quite a few of you have suspicioned that I have been despondent over my not having the Voice Activation software yet, and I will soon, thanks to Roger Dale Trexler over at Annihilation Press and the guy who will watch my back in the coming zombie war. But really, is VA what its all about when my body has all these scars and the boring old stories that go with them? (I remember when I once had witty anecdotes). Or the fact that I can't have the VA when I'm at work 55 hours a week in this new Twilight Zone aspect of my life. Look at the photos if you will, or stop here. Enough with my moaning, it was worth it if you know that I've got a pretty decent story idea out of it, and tomorrow I'll post about fun stuff like anthologies with my stories reprinted in The Netherlands.

Letting The Chilly Girl Have The Cab

This post might seem rushed because my right side is spasming, a cold rain has made the temperatures drop quite a bit. I was at the Red Lion tonight, Roger brought up some hardcover copies of FIENDS BY TORCHLIGHT for me, and I made it from work in time for the 2nd half of open mike. Martel--who will be interviewing me for DARK SCRIBE this weekend--wrote me this note and PSd it that I could post it on my blog. Its a nice note and I think I'll post in one day, but let it hang around for awhile. Many of the readings were quite long and Roger and I ended up taking the Brown Line back downtown at 11:30. We met a toothless wonder named Claude who told us about the Ewing Hotel (pictured) and how if we gave him money it would be for McDonalds and not Giordano's deep dish pizza, a somewhat clever line coming from a guy asking for spare change. I got off at Adams & Wabash, crossing overhead for the Orange Line and waited as Roger got off at Madison. I had told him to look for me and saw a flash of either a camera or a gun with a silencer. Either way, I hustled down the stairs and took the el to Midway Airport, the end of the line. By now it was almost 1 AM, and the airport was filled primarily with people who were sleeping it off until their connecting flight four or five hours from now. I went outside for whatever cab I might hope to find and let a young woman take the one cab in line. Another was pulling up further down the terminal, but I had a leather jacket on and she was shivering in a low-cut summery blouse. It looked like her luggage thingie with the wheels on it weighed more than she did. Well, the next cab was the cab of karma. A tiny Chinese man was behind the wheel, I recalled thinking how I never had a Chinaman for a cabbie ever in my life, and by the end of the ride, having talked about a few things like Monday's rain and that I was a writer, he showed me poetry of his own that he had written and explained one about various interpretations of the banyan tree...the tree itself, romance in the shadows, reading in the grass, many things. He offered me a copy, as he had several in a booklet beside him, otherwise I would have declined. I walked down the street towards my house--its always simpler for the cabbies to drop me off on 87th and make a U-turn--and smelled the poem and the note with his name in English and in Chinese. He arrived here from Chunking seven years ago. The pages smelled like the cab, a mustyy smell like that of an attic, or of our own Chinatown with its many small, enclosed shops. That's all there really is to my posting, though I wonder what kind of driver the chilly girl with the big suitcase had. Meeting a guy like Xinyao (X-zin-gao)makes me almost not think of 9/11. I am reading a book where a guy mentions someone so devoid of emotion that the numbers nine-eleven don't even make him think of making an emergency phone call. OK, now I'm done. Tomorrow I will write about how my last dog was stabbed by suburban polak thugs three days after my 40th birthday....Wayne

The Red Lion, Twilight Tales

Mark Millar must have some history with the pub, as the Scottish comic book writer had Captain America track down Giant-Man and beat the crap out of him. On Monday nights, since 1993, Twilight Tales has hosted readings from every genre, including open mike for novices and old farts alike. The first night I read, Bill Bixby died of prostate cancer. Three winters ago, I read on a particularly brutal night, standing at the podium I felt like a marionette, I had one arm folded with fist clenched behind my back as I read fragments of FOR YOU, THE LIVING in my little puppet voice. My heartbeat was closing in on 175 beats per second--I'm acutely aware of how well my body fails me--and it seemed as if my bloodstream was replaced by tap water. Heat pads are now available that I stick to my back, I would have worn them in 04 and the domino effect would be that I'd gradually revert back to what I call normal. One other time I was there in very much pain and there was a deal going on where Richard Engling played various instruments as readers took their turns with poetry or minor rants. That time was quite therapeutic for me, as are most times I am there. Even when I am feeling perfectly (for me) fine, I can enjoy the show or sit downstairs and talk with owner Joe Heinen over coffee for awhile, until the clock tells me its time to catch the last el train southward...Wayne

Shells Of Easter In The City

Easter. The eggs get broken. Shells discarded. I'm still angry about my last post and how much I want to eviscerate the bastard involved. He will end up being a stand-up guy at 26th and Cal(ifornia), site of Cook County Jail. Wasn't like he killed a kid. Nope. Cripples and homeless are fair game. Years ago, a guy living in a box on Lower Wacker Drive was killed by some hotshot shooting a crossbow; the guy was eventually caught after bragging about it. The crime is still the only "killed by an arrow" homicide in Chicago's sundried history of squalor and vileness. Maurice Kindness--he tells me with his Touerette's stutter that I could not pronounce his true name--has sold flags for years, since before the First Gulf War, his pleas or perhaps simple words barely audible on a windy day. Frank, the guy in the next photo, lives in the alley near the Red Lion Pub, at Fullerton and Lincoln, a lifetime and a lifeline away from downtown. Whenever I am going to go to the TwilightTales readings on Monday nights, I'll offer Frank a fiver and drink a coffee instead of a beer to start out. I am usually pissed off at myself in the simple fact that thirty-five steps will bring me into a conversation with Joe Heinen the Owner, the coffee reawakening synapses, my good deed already submerging. On Easter, I find myself thinking of "Flagman" and Frank more than I do my own family.