I, Continaut

Predator Press

[LOBO]

One of the greatest gags of nature and nurture ever played is the fact that I have been given just not quite enough talent to do most of the things I enjoy. Years of bands, countless hours of painting and sketching, hundreds of thousands of pages of science and philosophy ... indeed I have been a grotesque failure in spectacular multitude of platforms. The music was admittedly terrible, the art even worse. The clear critical thinking required of the sciences was always blurred in the pursuit of survival, the maintenance of ego and the shameless hunt for the content of the highest-cut skirts available.

But it was fun from time to time.

When I lived in Hawaii --roughly ten years ago-- I had a heyday of sorts. There was this broken down two-story building on Pauahi Avenue. While it was technically downtown, the neighborhood was rather dubious ... it bordered a strip-club peppered drug marketplace riddled with the worst humankind could possibly offer "paradise". This, incidentally, is the seedy side of Hawaii you don't see on postcards --in fact, you don't see it anywhere. Newspapers don't talk about it. Muggings and robberies and homicides [Oh My!] somehow never grace the television. Hawaii also had the worst homeless problem I've ever seen; mentally ill people, hygiene long since abandoned, wander freely in the mild weather to point and whistle into an empty sky, barking obscenities at unseen demons and occasionally spitting on the screaming pastel shirts of the unwary passer-by.

So in the evening, this particular building shut down quite completely; all the barbers and beauticians, photographers and souvenir stores, restaurants and tailors all locked up there tiny, crammed little shops and the place was left in hopes that the predatory denizens would once again just overlook the place --aside from the usual urinations and sleepers.

Tommy and I met by complete chance. I was struggling in my early semesters of college, enjoying the derision of a fierce feminist English teacher named Joan. Joan made it perfectly clear early on that I was not only "the worst writer she had ever had the misfortune of teaching", but I was also "so debauched and crude that [my] sanity borders on the deranged, completely devoid of even rudimentary literary skills taught in most fundamental junior high schools". She vocally --vehemently-- resented having to work with students such as myself as it was "virtually all remedial, and [we] had no business being in college".

So I need credits, and this bitch is really putting the spurs to me. I need something easy to balance the semesters workload.

It turned out I could pick up a few elective credits going through an apprenticeship program, and one that was offered was that of a jeweler. I figured, correctly, that I would spend a few months sweeping a jewelry repair store, taking out the garbage, et cetera.

Tommy, however, turned out to be something much more influential. He was most certainly a gifted jeweler, but this was completely eclipsed by his ability to play the drums. He was awesome. I had been playing guitar for years and we hit it off famously. Soon I was hanging around with him and his friends David and Reed --other custom jewelers who also worked in the same building.

The place was empty all night long. Within a month or so we had rented one of the vacant offices and shattered the still of the Hawaiian night, boozing and playing impossibly loud and awful music until dawn. He was a professional musician, and before long I was rubbing elbows with a myriad of musical talents. Of course Tommy eventually wanted to turn the rental office into a real recording studio, so a few of us ponyied up a modest investment to bring his brainchild "Split Second Productions" to it's fruition.

My role in this was pretty straightforward: I would pull in business whenever possible, monitor the bands, clean up and put away equipment when the allotted time was over and so forth. In return, I got "A"s for the semester and free access to the studio and equipment myself.

Reed was one of the most enigmatic characters I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Truthfully, I don't know if "Reed" was his first name or last. Six foot two and one hundred and seventy pounds soaking wet, he was a gangly kind of eccentric genius who painted in his free time and joked and pranked us incessantly. To pay the rent he made miniature gold tennis rackets and baseballs and sports-related bangles of all sorts. There wasn't always a market for the stuff, but when there was a market, the profit was huge.

Reed's "office" was on the second floor, and like the others, was crammed with tools, workbenches, display cases and so forth. We all suspected that he slept there because he was never absent ... there was no evidence of a bed or anything; the only obvious amenities consisted of a tiny little refrigerator full of whatever you feed a mad scientist like that. We would be rehearsing for some critically serious gig or recording, and right in the middle of the thundering bass and screaming guitars he would just burst into the studio with a trombone or a French horn from storage and start blowing crazy misshapen notes that would make us burst into hysteric laughter. He was just a naturally funny, brilliant guy

On the walls of his shop Reed hung his paintings ... paintings that never failed to mystify me. I loved them, and I would often mill about and admire them; the ranged from landscapes to nudes to surreal, and I would spot something clever and new in them every time I looked. During the ensuing months I tried to work up the courage to offer to buy one, but he was just so eccentric I could never figure out how to breach the subject. How much should I offer? Would he be insulted? Would he part with them at all?

And then one day Reed was gone.

We never saw him again. Poof. Curiously left his office completely intact as if it was waiting for him to return; rare metals, half finished projects, tools, everything was visible through the window in the door of his shop.

We waited.

After a week or so we found out he had been evicted. None of us knew exactly why, but theories sprang up like brushfires. The landlord found out he was living there. He was late on the rent. Whatever. Nothing ever got any confirmation.

One day after classes I wandered up to Tommy's office to do my usual cleaning, and realized that the landlord had hired a crew to dismantle Reed's office in order to prepare it for rental. The workbenches, the tools, the furniture ... all had been removed. Sheets were hung and paint buckets, rollers, industrial-sized brushes were strewn throughout a newly-painted powder-green room. Paint and plaster chips randomly covered the floor like shrapnel.

And in the corner, in a waist-high haphazard stack, a pile of bent and torn canvases lie, punched through with footprints and powder-green splashes ...

Sports Update

Predator Press

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Crap! I'm the sports reporter?

Look. Sports are boring ... except maybe mud wrestling. My commentaries are more in the order of renting revolvers at Kareoke bars: if even alcohol won't make those missed harmonies non-offensive to the ear, a blazing hail of hot lead will usually do the trick.

Can't we jazz sports up a bit? First, we gotta smear those maniacs climbing over and smashing women and children to catch the foul balls at baseball games. Whats a baseball cost anyway? Baseball would be greatly improved by using an explosive ball that detonates when it goes out of the field. Plus this whole "running the bases" thing is a real snoozer. We should dig pits between the bases and fill them with flaming pits of starving, pissed alligators swimming in sulfuric acid, and make the players swing over 'em Pitfall style. And it's like nine guys on the field versus this one guy batting ... lets even it up a little: rather than dropping the bats, have 'em take it with them so you can "tune up" the guys trying to tag you out.

Golf really needs work. I'm thinking make the players bungee down a cliff or something to tee off.

NASCAR could use some spicing up too. Make the drivers pick up psycho hitchhikers or something. Have the odd-numbered cars go the opposite direction on the track. How about having a random drawing and making them drive one of the spectators cars? [I could really get behind a driver that sputtered over the finish line of the Daytona 500 in a Chevette!] Maybe the drivers do those 24 hour races after a eating a dozen White Castle cheeseburgers. Or make them do it with their wives and kids in tow: between her making him stop for directions and the whole "are we there yet" thing going on every lap, that 23rd hour would be a fiery bloodbath.

Football would be more fun if you put like 100 guys for each team on the field at the same time and gave everyone in the audience that wears fan-based face paint a sniper rifle. Throw in some land mines, and you've got yourself a real show.

Hockey could be a lot more efficient too. Make the players take heroic doses of whiskey and PCP, throw the stupid puck away and let 'em beat each other into a fine paste.

There are so many things in life we do all the time that would make much more interesting athletic events worthy of a 60 million dollar five-year contract. Like shopping on Christmas Eve ... c'mon guys; some of those little old ladies take three or four elbows before you can wrench that Power Ranger doll from the clutches of the greedy little crone. Try to get a Whopper from Burger King --with cheese but without mayo-- completely devoid of any steroid use. Try to wrap your head around a standard-issue cellphone calling plan ...

Marshmallow

Predator Press
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Admit it ... the first thing that rang through our little minds was, "Was it a Democrat?"

Look, he's the Vice President of the United States for Chrissake ... aren't even the quail screened by the Secret Service in this kind of situation? Isn't there a Secret Service guy out there with a sniper rifle to take out the quail in case the VP misses?

Predator Press has the exclusive story.

Cheney came to the hunt in the Winter Camouflage Ensemble, sporting all the accessories from the M-16 all the way down to the sparkly Nucular [sic] Football.

Whittington showed up wearing the same outfit.

Words were exchanged, pine cones were thrown.

"Boom!" Harry cried. "Pine cones are grenades!"

Cheney balked. "Not until you tag the grill! You are out of bounds until you tag the grill!"

Alarmed into action by the use of grills and pine cone grenades, the quail sprung a retreat which prompted the secret service into action: gunfire inevitably erupted followed by surface-to-air missile launching which accidentally took out the Predator Press News Chopper [That's my story to the insurance company, and I'm sticking to it].

When we arrived on the scene the bus driver refused to continue on and gave us a hard time about giving us transfers. The forest was already ablaze: a smoky molten mass of hot lead, screaming quail and roasted marshmallows. Whittington reportedly "objected" to all bullets fired, but the Supreme court had already ruled that guns were fun and Whittington was basically a jerk anyways.

Then Tom Delay, covered in bush, camouflage and war paint climbed out of a pool of mud. He had several envelopes stuck on the tip of his bayonet. "Dick!" he cried. "Look! I got two gas bills, pizza coupons, and I think I won the Irish Sweepstakes!"

"I said we were hunting quail you moron," growled Cheney.

Tom, Dick and Harry all declined comment. Well, Harry would, but all we could make out was "OWEEEOWEEEOWEEEEE ...!" The President, however, was jubilant. "When Dick finds out Harry is only suffering from woundification, there's gonna be Hell to pay" Bush chuckled. He then whispered, "I told Cheney that Whittington was on the wiretap case."

Unfortunately, none of this sits well in the quail community; their homeland utterly destroyed. Even more unfortunate is the fact that none of us speaks quail, but we'll imagine what the quails would tell us in our effort to bring you the absolute journalistic Truth of the matter.

"America was our friend," the Quail Leader would squawk. "When they came in they said all they wanted was to crush all those evil deer. And maybe take out a lawyer or two. Now they are gone! Look at what they have done!"

The White House, seeking to choose a military leader with some experience in these sensitive political matters, has deployed a "peacekeeping" force: the entire Twelfth Armored Brigade under the leadership of one Colonel Sanders.

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning," declared the wily Colonel. "Smells like ... extra crispy."

Real Estate for the "Ambition Impaired"

Predator Press

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My mom just told me about a couple that retired in Maui and sold their business for 3.2 million dollars.

It's not really the amount of money that shocks me; I've lived in Hawaii and vacationed on Maui. Assuming the shop is in Lahaina, I completely believe the figures.

But what really interests me is where do you go to retire from Lahaina, Maui?

At some point this guy looked at his wife and said "Honey, I'm sick and tired of this fast-paced big city lifestyle. Let's take it easy from here on out and move to [dot dot dot]"

So where the hell do you go from there? Basking in my world-reknown slothful and indolent life, this sounds like my kind of place!

I could be mayor.

I could be king!

[*Whew* I'm getting winded from all this typing.]

Blacktop

Predator Press

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I drove a truck for a while. OTR ... that's where you don't come home but for a few days once a month.

I was stranded --snowbound-- less than 500 yards from my destination. Missed my appointment to unload as the whole town shut down.

I outran that storm for 200 miles. It caught me just as I entered the city.

I slept under twenty-seven inches of snow.

When I woke, the sun shown over a dry desert. The salt that stained my windshield was impossibly gone; I had a crystal-clear view of an immaculate blacktop highway, with bright crisp yellow lines freshly painted.

Confused, I got up and stretched. Scratching, yawning, rubbing my eyes, I walked back down the long hall.

There were doors on the left and right, but at the end of the hall was a bubbling hot tub. It appeared to be in a very large room. Without a conscious thought, I continued on.

As I advance, the center of the room is exposed revealing a magnificent round bed, silvery satin sheets, and a staggeringly beautiful woman nestled tightly twain. Familiar. Responds favorably to touch.

But the look on her face --so peaceful, so sound; soft breaths-- doesn't allow me to disturb her. I walk back to the "cab" of the truck and start off.

Every element of the Arizonian desert converges on the highway, which vanishes far off over the horizon. The light gets redder --like Mars-- and I get these little hallucinations of women. Naked women. The further I go, the more erotic ... left and right I see temptresses.

The sky darkens with every mile ... a hideous blood red, and you can see the waves of heat in the air. Especially over the laboring diesel engine. The tires are melting black ooze into the black highway ...

And I think, "Let's go!"

LOBO the IMMORTAL

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Chest pains and only 35 years old!

Gadz how depressing.

Luckily, I'm far too lazy for an all-out heart attack.

My heart is barely capable of issuing trade tariffs and -at worst- an oxygen embargo which will kill that tiny prick too. Nonetheless my heart remains very passive-aggressive. A sneaky lil bastard. It's been pissed ever since Ethan got that defibulator and started bringing it to my parties.

Chicks dig it, but when my eyebrows start to get singed I make Ethan stop ... I would classify that as a reckless Fire Code violation.

Sure I could rely on doctors and science an all kids of other voodoo hocus-pocus nonsense ... might as well wave a dead chicken over me.

But I have Faith.

[Plus, all I had was a can of Campbell's chicken soup ... this didn't do the trick.]

So I took it straight to The Man Himself.

I faked sneezing all day today, and racked up 104 "Bless You"s. Then, I ate angel food cake 'til the sparks shooting out of the crack under the bathroom door set the carpet on fire.

Now I'm not glowing and remain completely unable to turn anything into alcoholic beverages ... can't heal the poor, pull quarters out of your ear, et cetera. But the people that can do that kind of thing tend to get screwed: historically speaking, we haven't been very nice to them.

Chest pain is gone; I'm quitting here.