Through The Looking Glass

I bought the NaturallySpeaking voice activation software last week. It got to the point that by denying it, Terry O'Quinn was going to shoot me. Even Kimble's and Gerard's ghosts were whispering about how to haunt me. As expected the going is slow, Wayne is weighing, crap like that. A new set of headphones I've bought might help. It gets easier each time I practice, though some sentences come out like some link on page 57 of Google, you know, bikini beef hotdog gold coast monkey pee money Jessica Alba Biel Savitch money lucky numbersAlan Alda sensitive bukkake Snickers bar public banana. But I'm looking at things different now, instead of thinking I'm surrendering my humanity by using VA, I've become more daring. I've walked through the looking glass and I'm not looking back. And the white knight is talking backwards and the red queen has lost her head...Wayne

August 28th, 1967: The Day The Running Stopped

The day the running stopped, as narrated by the late William Conrad. Richard Kimble exonerated, Lt. Gerard slowing his car down with a nod of his head--he really was more of a chin pointer, though--at the man he tracked for four years. His memorable line: "It doesn't matter what I think, Kimble was found guilty in a court of law." Barry Morse died earlier this week at the age of 89. Outlived the entire main cast, the one-armed killer, David Janssen himself having died in 1980. One of my favorite shows as a kid and as an adult, I intend to have the theme music (which I have on CD) at my funeral. I'm the one-armed man typing with one finger. I'm chasing myself, an ethereal figure always nearby, moaning that it didn't matter what he believed, I was found crippled by an act of God. So my gang of three have finally all met up; Barry Morse was a great actor, underneath that fedora he haid hair like a lit match the way it stuck on his high forehead. And for years, I would send postcards from Kimble to high school buddy Paul Bervid, a D.A. in City Hall, he'd do the same as Gerard. We'd find old postcards from Wisconsin Dells or I'd mail gas station postcards from Omaha, Denver, or Dallas, when I was at the writing conventions. At least its was something to get in the mail besides flyers and applications for CapitolOne cards. I'm doing OK, I really am. But at the end of the night, when its me and the clacking of the keys and my collie at my side, I think of my funeral, my dirt nap, seeing the Grim Reaper and saying "There's my ride!" but hearing an echo in my dying brain...The Day The Running Stopped.

I Fought The Law, The Law Won

Or the aliens. Or the time warp. Sid posted a comment regarding Roy Thinnes in THE INVADERS, a great show from the 60s--I don't even want to think that this is going back almost half a century--where the dude is on the run from aliens in Bakersfield, California. They have the shape of humans, but bend their little finger in a weird Spock-wannabe movement. Roy Huggins created the show, along with Christian I. Nyby II (one damn cool name there, as a kid I thought it was Christian 1 Nyby 2). It was a follow-up to THE FUGITIVE, starring David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble. Forget ANY other version. Janssen was the man, in almost every scene back in a time when there were forty episodes a year, not twenty or piss and moan shows with ensemble casts. Kimble and Lt. Gerard, played by Barry Morse, whose hair made me think he had a matchstick for hair. (In two years, God willin' and if the creeks don't rise, I will have outlived Janssen, who died on Valentine's Day 1980, playing golf in Palm Springs. Heart attack. Me, I want to explode. Not a suicide bomber thing. Just a freak accident in a trans-dimensional attempt at finding an alternate universe where I actually have a girlfriend). But I digress. Kimble brought the one-armed man to justice--well, he killed him on the Mahia Mahia ride at Santa Monica Pier even though it was supposed to be Stafford, Indiana (see, I know my stuff). August 29th, 1967, the day the running stopped. Kimble with hottie Diane Baker, who then appeared in the first episode of THE INVADERS. An odd cycle, symmetry like in RUN, LOLA, RUN with Franke Potente. I posted the last shot for the guys reading the blog, I'm just saying, is all. I wasn't the only one running. Pant, pant, pant. I have Janssen's heart, if I outlive him, as I did Elvis and Karl Edward Wagner, Rod Serling is next on my list. One man's list, which wil take him to a place we can only call...THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Freaky, chain-smoking bastard. (I'm kidding, I'd be hotboxing Pall Malls with him in a second...) Well, time to shut my babbling brain off, see what happens when I can type fast? Your chattel, Wayne

Mah Boy Mah Boy!

Stewart, Charles, and those who didn't comment on the blog: thanks. I am doing much better today, the body adapts in slow ways. The spirit of Elvis guides me on this, what would be his 72nd birthday. I am envied by some for having a story--"Elviscera"--in THE KING IS DEAD, but it tells a sad tale that still hold true. Next on my list of people to outlive, both David Janssen of THE FUGITIVE fame, and Rod Serling, both dead at 49. I'm closing in, baby. As I've said in the past, when I see the Grim Reaper with his scythe, I'll be telling you all "Gotta go. There's my ride." Hunka hunka burning love, Wayne