Teal Tell All (Then Back To The Old Haunts)

Within seconds of my blog post, Von sent a comment; I felt like Charlie typing in the entry code for Good Vibrations in The Looking Glass and Penny pops up almost immediately. Of course, anybody who doesn't watch LOST will not get this observation, but you could always email Sid or Larry. Sid mentioned a pun on a Wayne shade of teal, which reminds me of a similar line after my late friend and editor of Year's Best Horror wrote "Burst Just Ghostly." I told him the next line must be "turn a Wagner shade of Ka-arrl." (Bastardized Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale," for you young'uns out there, a song that will be played at my funeral). Charles queried on just HOW teal could be a doorway to madness, well, it CAN be. But I have Johnny Cash and Robert Mitchum as my gatekeepers.

Back to the Draculs (no typo) and Am'tyville thangs. Old Haunts, Night Two. I hardly get to downtown Chicago anymore, certainly not during the day. I miss seeing my fellow meltdowns, like old Ellroy trudging back to the Thompson Building, mumbling to himself. And probably in a better state of mind than me. Maybe he's talking with a ghostly Karl Edward Wagner or tapping out Baa Ba Baa BA BA bum ba5 over and over in my, um, his head.

Old Haunts

My old laboratory is now an old haunt. Everything was taken off the walls after I decimated my bookshelves. The south wall is now a teal doorway into madness. Two entire bookshelves are gone. Perhaps in my insanity I'll now call this place my control tower. We'll see. Anyways. I think I'll be posting regularly again, for now my theme being old haunts. I have an entire folder of photos, plus others that need to be rescanned because of my recent hard drive debacle. That top photo? You can still see both the interior and the exterior of The Orbit Room in episodes of CRIME STORY, set in 1962 Chicago. It was a dance club, retro before retro was the in thing, playing Sinatra next to Siouxsie & The Banshees. Now its a bank. A fucking bank. More soon. Wayne

As With Wet Tears In Rain

That line is a part of a poem I wrote after seeing BLADERUNNER a quarter century ago, the scene with Rutger Hauer at the end, the rhyming couplet was, if I recall correctly, "the stutter of poets insane." I'm still around, not purposely hiding from this particular microverse. I'll have something interesting to write soon. Threats, always with the threats...

Things To Do In Denver When You're Dust

Stolen from the Andy Garcia film set in Denver, my fictional home away from home, and a movie with probably the finest performance by Treat Williams. Well, the decimation is complete. Bob and Kate have on several occasions chided me on tossing out things I might one day regret. Rest assured, the important stuff will be on display in my abattoir again soon. I'll likely relegate the paperbacks to the crawlspace next to the vats of quicklime. As for now, the room is still caked with dust, a similar kind as I see and smell at the graphics shop, its in my ears and in my eyes and I generally feel like Kharis, the Mummy. Hell, I look like him on my best day. The first two photos reflect the dust layered on my jar of several doll heads ( my nieces very much were intrigued by tearing action figures apart when they were younger; I couldn't do the same with my fake-bearded G. I. Joes, the heads were kept taut by rubber bands. I used to hang them from my bedroom window instead, after the commanding officer discovered them with my sisters' Barbies, Midges, and the forgotten Mattel doll of the 70s, Malibu P.J.). Then you see the various bottles in my woeful bottle collection: Night Train (which you can mix with the light blue Aqua Velva to make the $1.77 bottle last longer), Kentucky Nip, and an odd concoction simply called The Drink, a skeletal Elvis warning us "Be Careful Who You Idolize." Next to that, the Elvis candle I received from my cousin Deke Rivers after my novel was published in 1992. Guess my idolization has doomed me already. Next comes the painting, the removal of crappy furniture, and a nice TV and DVD player in my laboratory. I have finally resigned myself to the technology of the new century. And once upon a time, my letterhead read "I Will Flatline Before I Go Online." That was until October of 1997. I suppose a decade later, a DVD player might be in order...Wayne

A Midnight Dreary

I had been talking with Sid about finding books or magazines I had stories or poems in, and how sometimes I meet (or become email-pals with) someone who had also been a contributor. Like a string theory of intersecting careers. Charles Gramlich and I are in the same book featuring Poe-inspired poetry, published on the (I think) 150th anniversary of THE RAVEN seeing print. The second poem/photo montage is by J. Christiano, and was presented to me at a surprise party following the publication of THE HOLY TERROR in April of 1992. The film WAYNE'S WORLD was in theaters at the time, and it was one of the few gifts I received that was not related to that Saturday Night Live skit. Still deciding what to keep and what to doom---Wayne