It’s the end of October. I have the Omen to watch and I just feel like posting these words of wisdom:
There has been too much violence, too much pain. None here are without sin. But I have an honorable compromise. Just walk away. Give me the pump, the oil, the gasoline, and the whole compound, and I’ll spare your lives. Just walk away. I will give you safe passage in the Wasteland. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.
–Lord Humongous
8: Man of the People
When I was young, I suffered lots of migraines. Now, I know you’ve seen commercials for this or that brand of pain reliever’s migraine strength product. If you can actually get those products to work, lucky you. They didn’t exist in my younger days and they don’t do much to help me now. I simply have to suffer a migraine. If you’ve never had one, let me give you an idea of what one is like.
It generally starts when you wake up. You’ll sit there with your cup of coffee and a bagel or something when you noticed you can’t actually see the cup anymore. It’s been replaced by those floating things you see when you’re trying to go to sleep. Well, except for one difference: it’s really thick. So, you start blinking to get rid of the pea soup growing on your eyes. If you’re lucky, you lose your peripheral vision in your left eye. If you’re like me, you lose sigh entirely. About a half hour after that, the pain really starts.
This is intense pain. It isn’t like that pressure that builds up over your eyes when you can’t take ragweed. This is the head in the vice and a taffy pull at once. This is such a startling and rocking pain that all you can do is yell … because you can’t quite believe that this is actually happening. Your perception of the world changes and your face is strapped to a twenty ton weight. Oh, yeah, one more precious gift from that stage-light makes it worse! All you can do is lay down and try to go to sleep, but by this point your eyes are bloodshot with tears and your stomach is in knots, but evening crying about the pain in your gut makes it feel worse. So, you lay back, trying to remain perfectly still when the gastro-intestinal fluids start bubbling up.
So you’re laying there and you feel a mouthful of spit fill up, you swallow it and realize that it’s not spit … it’s stomach acid. So, while still dizzy and off balance from the pain in your skull, you stumble and run to the nearest toilet, sink, or bed that isn’t yours and puke.
I don’t mean a little upset tummy, I mean you let go of all the contents of your stomach … it just keeps coming worse than any binge night you’ve ever had, at least you fall asleep and forget that. This vomit you have to remember. So you kneel at the porcelain god for something on the order of ten minutes losing that bagel and coffee you had earlier … there’s nothing left in your stomach to come out … so you head back to bed. Read More…
Michael Caine is the star of “Get Carter” and “Jaws IV: the Revenge.” He made a video on acting that became something a fascination for Conan O’Brien and Howard Stern back in the 1990s. Here’s the best known clip from that tape:
7: The Man In-Between
My bags hit the hardwood and echo ever so slightly off the walls. At first glance, my apartment is exactly as Valerija found it. There is mail piled up on a small table by the door. The key-hooks are gone. My turntable and stereo are back near the windows facing the street.
There’s even a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the cupboard. Heh.
Everything that was mine is accounted for. The only thing she took is a Nick Cave LP she bought for me.
It occurs to me that I’ll need a computer of my own. She liked gadgets and brought them here; so they naturally went with her. Also, I hope email hasn’t changed too much since the way it worked when I was a teacher.
I plop down onto the bed. It doesn’t feel any different from the endless stream of hotel beds I’ve known the last year. You’d think there’d be some memory of what it feels like to lay here. Instead, the sense is totally new. Maybe she replaced the mattress; burning the previous one.
Home is just another destination on the endless tour.
I hear the phone, my real one on the wall, ring. The real bells let out a satisfying tone, so much so I let them play out.
Whoever needs me will need me tomorrow, I think.
Maybe I do remember what this bed is supposed to feel like.
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The warehouse lights destabilize my vision. The electronic store is just as much a distribution center as anything else. A kid in a blue polo shirt spots me and walks over. “Fuller?”
Recognition is still nice. “The one and only,” I reply.
“Aw shit, man. My friends’ll bug. Can I take a picture?”
“During work hours?”
He suddenly remembers he’s an employee. “Oh, shit, right. Of course. You need any help or something?”
Heh. Read More…
Chapter Seven is written, but the editor I press-ganged into service has not yet sent me corrections and I’d hate to post a rough draft without at least a little revision. Biweekly Fuller will resume this coming Wednesday.
Since I’m doing housekeeping in this post, be sure to check the Twitter feed for CBR updates. My review of “Whiteout” is up. While I don’t praise the film, I think some of the over critiques are being overly harsh to it. To read their reviews, it would appear the film is some cinematic crime. Having watch many, many, many crimes against film, I can safely say “Whiteout” is a by-stander. Now that I think about, I may have to do a post about movies that are just there, but neither delight nor anger.
Meanwhile, here’s the Flavor of Hawaii:
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