Meanwhile@Stately wayne Manor

Shelbyville Reunion, July 2003

2006-10-10T01:40:00.000-05:00

Here is Wayne in between my mother, Dolores, and my daddy Jim. Or, as nicknames go, Doll and Leland. We were staying at my Auntie Dorothy's and I arranged for Wayne to be driven the 110 miles from Madisonville--his son David drove Wayne and Bobbi, and David was the one who suggest Two-Gun Henley to me, which I of course put a twist to. My father was the only one in the dark, and they sat the entire afternoon on Auntie Dorothy's new deck, talking about growing up in Humboldt Park, Wayne and my dad walking from Wolcott and Willard Court, respectively. Meeting up at Henderson Park. How they stood on Honore Street and watched a scene from CALL NORTHSIDE 777 filmed, my dad being a bouncer at Mania's Lucky Stop on Division Street, with my mom a dice girl at the Orange Lantern over there by Hermitage, things like that. Well, I called him yesterday evening while my nieces were playing ball in the yard. My father is very hard of hearing now, so I got the full story. Three months ago, Wayne had a 60 pound tumor removed from his stomach. Underneath that, the docs found cancer in his spleen, prostate, gall bladder, everywhere. He's not on chemo and getting hospice. He wanted to spare everyone from feeling the need to visit, but after getting the copy of the book I dedicated to him, he had to tell everyone in the Chicago area. I will be in Austin at the end of October for the World Fantasy Convention, but hope to take Greyhound to Louisville in November and get my Cousin Slick to drive me in his '64 Dodge Dart out towards Madisonville. I still haven't cried, though tears almost came Saturday morning while I was walking in the tunnel connecting the Red and Blue subway lines, of all places. More like my eyes unfocusing, floating in mist. He worked for decades as a trucker until the place went bankrupt, he moved back to KY and ran a store called Henley's Gottemdown (after a radio show that is long gone). He kept saying how proud he is of me, and I told him that while he was having a life I was writing my fictions every day for twenty years now. I wanted to die before him. There are too many ghosts around me and I want to join them.......Wayne

Henley Heaven

2006-10-07T02:20:00.000-05:00

I had been thinking about doing a post about ol' Bob Petitt, the Baton Rogue, or my John Agar Hypno-Cube, but that aint gonna happen. The photo is of Wayne & Bobbi Henley, the Wayne I dedicated my book to, the Wayne "One and A Half Gun" Henley from my story HIGH MOON, my namesake. He called today, while I was at the print shop, and talked to my father, kept things vague, though it could be my father being very hard of hearing. What I do know is this: the Madisonville KY doctor gives Wayne Henley three months to live. I can't even cry because of the meds I take to control being bipolar and in pain. The last time I cried was 18 days after 9/11, it took me that long. Before that, when my grandfather died in 1996, though I can fall silent when hearing Johnny Cash or George Jones singing "He Stopped Loving Her Today." But I can't cry, I'm trying to right now and I can't. Wayne

The Book Is Out!

2006-09-30T20:53:00.000-05:00

FIENDS BY TORCHLIGHT is now available as fast as I can sign each copy. The brains behind Annihilation Press is Roger Dale Trexler, who is publishing a collection by Lawrence P. Santoro, JUST NORTH OF NOWHERE, early next year. You can order the book by checking the website at www.annihilationpress.com or by ordering a copy through Shocklines.com. Hardcovers and paperbacks are all going to be signed and are available at a price that is not eye-gouging. Two photos are published here, the latter is my author photo on the back cover, also by the legendary Greg Loudon, who made the cover as memorable as it is. Examples of his artwork, as mentioned in a previous post, can be seen in his sketchbook, CRUEL & UNUSUAL (with an introduction, "The Corpse Men Like," by some balding hermit in Burbank, Illinois, or at www.desolateangels.net. Why these two guys would put up with a crazy bipolar bastard like me is beyond me. The first photo was taken at the Red Lion, home of the Twilght Tales readings, and from left to right are myself, Larry Santoro, Roger Dale Trexler, Marty Mundt, with John Everson kind of squatting the way John Everson seems to enjoy doing. I have a funny look on my face both because Larry is leaning on my shoulder and (off-camera) Marty has his friend Giddyup Bandito dressed in a blood-stained clown suit, standing on a stack of CAT FANCY magazines, and seconds away of shooting a seltzer gun filled with bacon grease at my crotch. Enough of the past, what a silly night that was. Just wanted to tell you all about the book, because that is what literary whores do...I'll let you get back to your regularly scheduled life now...Wayne

VonCon 1993

2006-09-25T00:40:00.000-05:00

The photo quality is bad, but here's the dilly-o. Von replied to my last post about where those 19 years have gone. A few of them had quite a few of us writer types ganging up on each other, either at a VonCon (where a spinning fan leapt from a shelf of cookbooks trying to kill me; there were witnesses and I made a girly-scream like Will Smith in I, ROBOT) or out in Virginia at Beth Massie's Pseudocons. Here we all are on a Saturday afternoon on Von's big, giant back porch, left to right, me with hair, Kathleen Jurgens, Don VanderSluis, Rodger Gerberding (who is now Mr. Kathleen Jurgens), Alexa deMonterice (who worked so close to Ground Zero I was frantic on that...day), a trying to hide Beth Massie, Dolly Nickel, Brian Hodge, Bunny & Snake (ok, ok, Jessica and Sean Doolittle), and Cathy Van Patten and then-fiance Jeff Osier. What a crowd. Back in the day, Sean was the new kid at the dance. His third book, RAIN DOGS, is in print now. You can Google most any of these people without getting slapped, but my reading recommendations would be Von's AFTER AGE, Jeff's DRIFTGLIDER, Brian's WILD HORSES (though reading PROTOTYPE was the only text besides Philip K. Dick's personal letters that wanted me to commit suicide, and that's a high compliment), and, hell, where to start with Beth. Her first novel, SINEATER. Her story "Abed" in one of those Skipp & Spector BOOK OF THE DEAD anthologies, like I said, Google away. Dolly & Brian blew out of southern Illinois for Boulder, Colorado (near my own ghosts in Denver) and Sean and Jessica now have Kate and Jack to keep them even busier. Me, I just keep telling my stories or reporting the truth, whichever you want to believe at the time. I thank Christ every day that I got to know these wackos, pictured here on a porch in Hanover Park, October 1993. Wayne

The Skin of Buildings

2006-09-24T02:02:00.000-05:00

Yvonne Navarro, who I have known longer that just about anybody outside of my immediate family and imaginary playmates, going back to 1985 and when we were just starting to, well, I blatantly whored myself, Von, being able to type 3,000 word a minute, simply sent out several hundred stories a day, but that was back in the day. And, yes, the above sentence has about 47 punctuation errors in it, but writing about Von can do that to a guy. A link to her site can be found in the margins, and you can see how she has totally eclipsed my output as of, well, 1987. But we were discussing the fact that the old First District station house is now a building of condos called State Place. She mentioned that even though the old police HQ was gone, that there must still be the ghosts of the victims and the jailed souls hanging around. I was reminded of a line Meyer Meyer tells Steve Carella in one of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct books, he ponders "what goes on behind the skin of buildings?" I always look for building that are soon to disappear, and was finally able to get to Wolf Road off the Tri-State Tollway and take some photos of the old Sante Fe Speedway. Richard Chwedyk sent me the radio catch-phrase, "Only one speedway has a track of clay and you aint seen nothin' 'til you been to Sante Fe." Sante Fe Springs was a town lost once Route 66 died, but Sante Fe was around until just a decade or so ago. I passed the building back in June on my way to that funeral in Hampshire, and knew if I didn't get the photo soon, the building would collapse in the next big storm. From the Tri-State, you can see the sign but not be aware that it is attached to a building. There is residential housing nearby, the suburb is now Burr Ridge, and an older woman in a muu-muu watched me take photos with my friend Ray (who drove me there), as if we were Al-Queda scoping out local monuments. Which, as far as I'm concerned, the Sante Fe Speedway sign is. Wayne

Always My Anchor

2006-09-21T00:54:00.000-05:00

The photo itself is of Ashley in 1999, 9/9/99, in fact. Dressed as a "Jailhouse Rock" convict to fit in proper with my surprise 40th birthday party, complete with an Elvis impersonator. But the computer page, straight from GOODFELLAS and (mis)spelled probably less than something Joe Pesci's character might have typed , was one of the many notes and drawings that Ashley has left me over the years to keep me sane. Well, sure, I was the one who taught her the phrase when she was seven, just like her first catch-phrase in kindergarten was "Hasta la vista, baby!" I thought this post might be a good transition in getting past the past and moving on with new thoughts. At least, until that next bright September day comes around next year...Wayne

A 9 Year old's Drawing

2006-09-19T00:57:00.000-05:00

The attacks of 9/11 eventually shut my mind down, turning my hands to cement. I was writing nothing at all, I would have strange dreams of fighting Mohammed Atta in the mouth of a gigantic dolphin, waking up feeling as if the barometer had dropped to an all-time low. Ashley would often have a Saturday night sleepover, mostly to play games and use my computer. I had various superhero action figures that perched on my bookshelves, Hourman, Green Lantern, good old Superman. Even bad buys like Psycho-Pirate, if only for his garish costume. To cheer me up on one of these sleepover weekends, Ash drew this scene of the heroes in my room saving people jumping from the towers. My brain started working again, I ended up writing a story called "I Know I Can Never Save Her," because I realized that what 9/11 had truly done to me was take away my invincibility. I always believed that I would give my life for a stranger as well as Ashley or any family member. My niece is now in middle school and at times, I think of Columbine, but I still have the stark realization that even though I believe that I am unbreakable, we now have to deal with suicide bombers who will eventually find a way to blow themselves up wherever they please wearing explosives under a Nicoderm patch. ...Wayne

Here Is New York

2006-09-16T14:18:00.000-05:00

The week continued here in Chicago just as it did five years ago, the day of the attacks passed and images become blurred again, a photo album being pressed into murky waters. "September 11th happened." As if a calendar date could "happen." This seems like a phrase that George Carlin would have drawn upon; the younger generation would liken the following riff to something Jerry Seinfeld would have come up with, but Seinfeld pretty much followed with the every day observations Carlin started, just as Bob Newhart and Steve Allen opined on the 1950s. Over the last week, going back five years ago, every day in my AOL mailbox carried a letter from Rebecca Maines, and these five letters can be read if you visit her web blog Re: Maines and read her own Five Years Later entry. Becky reminded me of exactly how powerful the written word can be. There are times I forget myself. The photos came after. The HERE IS NEW YORK exhibit came to Chicago sometime before the end of the month. Individual still photographs were for sale, with hundreds on display, many clipped from wires as if it was a gigantic but well-lit darkroom. Outside on Lake and Wabash, buses, the elevated trains hitting the noisiest turn in the city, conversations, curses, cell phones chirping. Inside the revolving doors, I might have well been inside the Great Pyramid.

Five Years Ago But A Few Hours Earlier

2006-09-11T14:07:00.000-05:00

The Loop had been evacuated. I recall the compression of time because Flight 93 was still in the air when I walked towards the train and yet both towers of the World Trade Center were gone during my trek four blocks south. The Orange Line elevated train winds southwest to Midway Airport, and if I was at all baffled by the enormity of that day--having no cell phone, lap top, or radio headphones--I climbed the steps towards the area where the buses pull in and found an equal amount of people streaming down from the escalators leading towards the long maze of hallways that cross through the parking garage to the inside of the airport. I had never heard so much confusion from two different directions. My bus to 87th was standing room alone and filled with people from England and Oregon and yes, NYC, all of whom disembarked near the string of motels at Marquette Road. At this same time, amidst all the chattering of voices and people conveying pieces of news they knew or had heard or had overheard, all planes were being grounded. I could get only one good photo because of the crowds bumping past me. But I will always remember plane after plane after plane lined up past the White Castle's and Continental Foods to land, little more than two to three minutes apart. The sounds of the engines over Cicero Avenue was like a monstrous turbine fan amplified to the highest level. Walking to my house, I saw three guys working with jackhammers on LaPorte, thinking, man, I bet these guys don't even have a clue. Wayne

Granddaddy Grover

2006-09-10T22:29:00.000-05:00

Most of my life, I'd see him every Father's Day, whether he had driven up from Hialeah, Florida, or down the short distance from Dry Ridge, a little speck between Cincinnati and Lexington. But the family would all meet in this big Quonset hut in Eastwood, everyone eating KFC back when it wasn't abbreviated or pot roasts and pies. Today is Grandparents' Day, another one of those holidays that Hallmark or Lex Luthor invented. Grover was the last one to go, my mother's folks died back in the 1930s, and Busha passed away in 1992, four years earlier than my granddaddy. At the funeral, I turned to my cousin Denise and said "We are our parents now." She remembers those words well. Some lines don't need to make it into my stories. My baldness is a gift from him, the whole skipping generations thing. When I was younger, he ran a Sunoco gas station in Florida, and I would get the mascot dinosaurs made out of soap, long necked brontosauruses. I suppose I could make an aside to sitting the wrong way and getting a better understanding of what prison life might entail. But I won't. I'd rather remember our shiny bald heads and how if it wasn't for Grover I wouldn't look like The Hills Have Eyes dude (never mind my father has resembled James Rockford for three-quarters of a century). The way I've been putting these entries down lately, I might as well mention that, aside from the real anniversary tomorrow, Johnny Cash will also have been gone two years. I'm getting to the age where the dead outweigh the living...soon enough, I'll be saying "Here's my ride!" Wayne

Dipple's Printshop and Joe Incredible

2006-09-09T00:52:00.000-05:00

It was Joe that emailed me about Dan's passing, dying peacefully in his sleep last Saturday. Dan Dipple ran InstantPrint, across from the Loop Station Post Office, where I had gone for twenty years to get things velo- or spiral-bound. Dan was a big fan of Clint Eastwood, and even had a letter from Clint, thanking Dan for the offer of printing up flyers for when the actor was running for mayor of Carmel-By-The-Sea. So when I needed a cop tavern as a device for story telling, I created Dipple's PrintShop, setting it on Eastwood Avenue. The fictional in-joke was that the cop bar used to be joint that printed counterfeit money in the back room. When my fictional Dan Dipple took ownership of the place, he called it the PrintShop in honor of the cops who gave him the opportunity to buy the place. Dan was pleased to find himself tending bar and hearing cops narrate stories in "This Old Man Came Rolling Home" in the TwilightTales' BLOOD & DONUTS anthology and "The Jazz Cat of Division Street," from, um, 100 CRAFTY CAT CRIMES. In the time since I lost my job downtown, I'd known his health had worsened, though he'd had the gravelly voice of a pool hustler or card dealer for as long as I'd known him. I had expected to see Dan and give him a copy of FIENDS BY TORCHLIGHT later this month when I also inscribed one for Joe. The guy won't tell me his last name, I'm stuck with Incredible because I once had him jut his chin out for a photo so I could cut and paste it (the old-fashioned way, with scissors and tape) over an advertisement for THE INCREDIBLES video game or DVD release, something like that. Came out good, and I knew I was right, because an old black gentleman in the shop when I first told that to Joe, about his resemblance to the cartoon father, nodded his head and laughed. Blogger being what it is, it seems as if Joe and Dan are looking away from each other, Joe with a spurned look on his face. I hope Dan's laughing up in Heaven at this lucky mistake. For now, I have another immortal in my fictionalized version of my reality. Raise a glass of water or ale or mango juice to my friend Dan Dipple! I'll catch up to you one day, chum. Wayne

The Real Me

2006-09-08T00:57:00.000-05:00

I'm the guy in the background, that's how my form looks when I am most comfortable. Hunched and agonized. Pissed me off enough that I had forgotten for most of the day that a close friend had died in his sleep Saturday, and I was told this in an email early yesterday morning. But I mourn him and my next post will be about his effect on my life. The illustration is by Douglas C. Klauba, who illustrated many of my stories, such as this one, "Corky's Quickies," for GRUE magazine. He got it pinned down right and after reading the story told me that it scared the hell out of him. The real me will do that to people. I tear holes in the back of my shirts by grabbing the dead muscle around my shoulder, the latest casuality is a grey Honolulu lifeguard t-shirt I bought at the Salvation Army three months ago. I claw at my back like a werewolf or a zombie with no real clue. Then, as I wait for the bus today, the guy who gets off reminds me of this fucking reality game even more: he has a muscular disease, stepping off the bus after some impatient asshole on a cell phone boards before he can even move. He has a beat up black briefcase in one hand, and the clumps it makes tells me there is little in it, a resume and newspaper, perhaps. He has to back out of the bus, I hold his back and feel my own. Taut muscle over a skeleton, a body defined by the disease, strength in different areas than those in the members of the Tuesday night Jazzercise class . When he walks off, thanking me for my little effort at trying to be human, he looks like a man in a spliced film. He handles this better than I do, the interstices in my brain leave me insane and suicidal. On my worst days, I'll run into somebody who has things much, much worse than I do. But wheras I admire their courage, I prefer to remain delusional. A 46 year old virgin who turns 47 two days before the five year anniversary of 9/11. In a body that cannot focus its eyes or handle things with two hands independent of each other. Sick of taking medication that blocks a certain amount of the pain after it leaves my brain and spins around in some receptor. There is a country song by Big & Rich called "This Life." One of the phrases is "...I'll live this life 'til this life doesn't need me anymore." When I fall into these deep holes I wonder just why the hell life needs me here in the first place, never mind needing me anymore. Show the ending credits, for God's sake. Wayne Allen Sallee 1959-2006

Marvin Walked On Water

2006-09-06T00:47:00.000-05:00

Marvin Melone was one of my favorite people to talk with when I was on the farm. He had been hit in the head by a horse in his younger years, and walked to church several miles away every Sunday. I often thought of us being kin, the outsider kind. The same kind of stuff that went on in his head mirrored my own nonsensical bipolar brain. Along with his other belongings, after his death I was given this photo. Several years back, I added the clipping--taken from some magazine--because Marvin looks like he could've been in Bonnie & Clyde's gang or Ma Barker's crowd. There is a country song by Randy Travis with a title that sums up my truest memory of Marvin. "I thought that he walked on water." Wayne

Busha's Farm

2006-09-04T22:27:00.000-05:00

A year ago, I was in Shelbyville visiting my family, and my cousin Danny and I went down Flat Rock Road to my grandmother's farm. Grace Melone--Busha is grandmother in Polish--passed away in 1992 and within days of our visit the building was razed. I did retreive a brick from the chimney, not really caring if half the house caved in on me. This room looked almost like the photo but for the phonograph on the floor, which had fallen off the chair pillow when I stepped through the doorway. I wondered how many days it had sat on its side, waiting to fall. This room belonged to Marvin, my step-grandfather's brother. When Marvin passed away, Danny's sister Denise saved me his glasses, wallet, and Bible. Each item is on my dresser, stacked neatly in a pile a short distance from my mug of flags. I do not know the story behind why his door--leading to an outer porch and past that the water pump--was painted lavender, but there it is. Well, there it was. Wayne

Labor Day Flags & Maurice Kindness

2006-09-03T22:48:00.000-05:00

For many years I only knew this guy as the flag man. He'd move from street to street downtown, mumbling in a way that had me believing he had a muscle disease, not someone shuffling words through a personal purgatory. He'd never ask for anything, just wave his flags. His eyes would catch yours, but never plead. I knew him when his hair was black, not grey. The flags have always been the same size, proportionate to a bar of soap being an aircraft carrier or a slice of the lunar surface. I had not seen Flag Man for many months until he reappeared last winter and I was actually surprised that I could understand him, though not on every day. He would sell his flags in the rain, or in the cold, accepting a dollar, a quarter, a handshake. I asked him his name on one of his better days, when his face was missing the facial tics I had become used to, and he said his name was Maurice. He pointed at the badge on his jacket, but it held meaningless information. Perhaps on the back a concerned family member had camoflauged his true name and address if he was found in some sad way by the police. I asked him his last name and he said that he could not pronounce it for me. But he told me that I could call him Maurice Kindness. I have kept every flag I ever bought from this man, this laborer who shares the street with a man with a tobacco spit cup who can't even take the energy to pronounce "gimme change" properly. I work in Alsip now and have not been in the Loop at any proper time that I might see my favorite flag man. But I look at my Dog 'N Suds root beer mug filled with the tiny toothpicks and the red, the white, and the blue, as I put my change and keys into my pocket. And I get my first smile of the day. Happy Labor Day, gang. Wayne

Loyola Elevated Stop, 1984

2006-09-02T23:56:00.000-05:00

Next to the Wendy's was the coolest used bookstore in Chicago, Project 1999. You had to climb ladders and across planks to get to various books. I still have a Polish Bible and a WHO'S WHO IN CHICAGO 1926, bought for seven dollars because there is a water stain on the inside front cover. Most of my Ed McBain 87th Precinct paperbacks were purchased in two visits. It is hard to see, but the billboard--the actual reason I took this photo, was about animal experimentation, and there is a photo of a cocker spaniel in a glass bottle. I use that image in my free style 30 page poem DESMOND'S INFERNO, with the line "the el train throttles past puppies in bottles." An odd phrase until you see the image actually existed. Later, Wayne

Block 37, 1988

2006-09-02T00:04:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, Salma Paradise over at Live Journal mentioned my Red Lion reading and how I surprised her by not reading blood & gore but rather images of good old gritty Chicago. So it seems best that I add a photo entry that substantiates my original intentions of this web blog and the pictures I post. The block here is almost twenty years razed, only recently having been excavated to make room for the new CBS studios. Block 37, or The Spaniel Block, was a bizarre place in the 70s and 80s, back when the Greyhound terminal was still holding court at the corner of Dearborn and Randolph, off the right side of my photo. From the vantage point of where I was standing, there is now a Border's and an Argo Tea shop. I have thrown away many photos over the years, but have always held onto this one, because of the woman passing before my camera. I always--always--wonder where she was headed after the shutter clicked and I turned back to wait for the 162 Archer Express bus. --Wayne

Time King

2006-08-30T01:55:00.000-05:00

This is the guy who helped me get out of purgatory. Unfortunately, he insisted I travel to 5700 A.D. and look for Green Lantern. Of course, I had to go. But the bitch never paid me a penny...everybody! Don't fall for these scams. Wayne

What The...?

2006-08-26T01:05:00.000-05:00

There could very well have been a puppet show, but I have NO idea who Sparky and Harky were. I am carrying a copy of this with me for when I see the Ferryman, as a token to get me a seat on the boat. Yea, still down here in Hell. Seen a few familiar faces...Wayne

And My Ride Continues...

2006-08-25T13:30:00.000-05:00

Suddenly my day turns into something more like JACOB'S LADDER. Forget the carnival, I can't even walk down the street. Or is it really a street? Maybe this is the place at the top of the wrong exit ramp from my previous post...Wayne

Carnival of Souls

2006-08-25T01:14:00.000-05:00

I have not added anything to the web log for a few days. My life has been like this gem of a film from around 1962. There's a country & western song on the radio with the lyrics "If you're going through Hell, just keep on going..." I'm trying to figure out where the exit ramps are down here. Wayne

More From Graceland, 16-18 August, 1992

2006-08-18T01:55:00.000-05:00

Please take note of my seedy moustache that makes me look like a Martin Mull wannabe or Ned Racine, the character William Hurt portrayed in BODY HEAT. If each wore glasses like Larry King, of course. I bought the Sacred Heart of Elvis at a gift shop and it cracked immediately, proving that there is a reason all Roman Catholics feel guilt for their actions. But I got away with writing on the wall...still an experience that will never leave my mind. Oh, and what a nice shot of my then-receding hairline...Long distance information, get me Memphis, Tennessee...Wayne

Lucky and Deke at the Elvis Grave

2006-08-17T02:02:00.000-05:00

It was 1992 and the candlelit walk took us into the early hours of August 17th, Elvis singing gospel songs from speakers in the trees. Me and my cousin Dennis in our alter-egos--Lucky Jackson and Deke Rivers--from Elvis's character in the movies VIVA LAS VEGAS and LOVING YOU, respectively. Easily one of the most surreal moments of my life. Walking in Memphis, baby do you know how I really feel?...Wayne

My Writing Career Reflected In My 100th Post

2006-08-14T14:06:00.000-05:00

The Biggest Floating Head Of All...

2006-08-12T23:37:00.000-05:00

Several people commented on my last post, so I tried to get this up as fast as I could. Of course, that meant locating the photo in my various folders. I had thought of naming the entry Shatner In The Sky With Diamonds, after that horrendous Beatles cover album of years ago. I can hear the echo of his voice on a deserted Loop street even now...Mis-TER TAM-BOUR-INE MAAAANNNNNN!!!!!!! And there you have it. Wayne

Locke & Loaded

2006-08-09T14:00:00.000-05:00

The new ABC studios have this big, giant Bladerunner type sign that advertises its various shows for the fall line-up. Yes, I did get a photo of William Shatner, as well, before you ask. I took the top photo from the Lake Street el platform one evening after leaving the Red Lion. The next photo was taken on a summer Sunday morning last year, and the fellow is sleeping it off right where the nighttime floating faces are...Wayne

Getting Lost

2006-08-09T00:39:00.000-05:00

I received my advance copies of the BenBella book based on the television series yesterday. I wrote a 625 entry glossary which finishes off the book. The trade pb is not short fiction, everything in the SmartPop series involves essays. A few years ago, a book based on NYPD BLUE was called WHAT WOULD ANDY SYPOWICZ DO? These days, I'm asking the same question myself...Wayne

A Real Flashback

2006-08-06T17:56:00.000-05:00

Wish I could've met this guy. He was one of the Ohio Sallees, best known for being on the team that played the Chicago Black Sox in the 1919 World Series. Slim also made Ripley's Believe It Or Not! by being the first pitcher to pitch a no-hitter in two consecutive World Series. Would have been nice to have seen him in FIELD OF DREAMS, maybe coming to Shoeless Joe Jackson's defense. Can't think of what actor would portray him...any suggestions? And, no, not Michael Berryman or Svengoolie, thanks. Slim died a few years before I was born, by the way.

Flashback Weekend, Part III

2006-08-05T02:12:00.000-05:00

After seeing Roddy Rudy Rapper sucker punch me, Tiffany Shepis, who starred in SCARECROW, was kind enough to offer me some comfort. Notice how my head is now about as big as Michael Berryman's...Wayne

Flashback Weekend, Part II

2006-08-04T12:38:00.000-05:00

Rowdy Roddy Piper was there because THEY LIVE, that cool movie from the mid-80s about alien infiltration that seems more plausible over the last few years was going to be shown on the inflatable drive-in screen on River Road later that night. (They were even selling the THEY LIVE sunglasses: OBEY! CONSUME! MWD! Um, made the last one up.) He took the time to talk with everyone and posed for individual photos. Most of the women were upset because he wasn't wearing his kilt, but his shirt does read HOT ROD, another nod to his WWF days. Wayne

Flashback Weekend

2006-08-03T01:01:00.000-05:00

OK, that's Svengoolie, our local TV horror host, at the top, and one of the stars of the film HOSTEL with me at the bottom. Between that you will find me with Michael Berryman, currently promoting THE DEVILS' REJECTS, but known for the 1979 version of THE HILLS HAVE EYES. I told him the story about the time I was at Doug Klauba's house and his brother was having a Hallowe'en party. I'm waiting for Doug, and some stoned dude passes me on the way to the bathroom and points at me and goes "Hills Have Eyes Dude!" Of course, I wasn't dressed for the party, I was wearing a black turtleneck. So I have been waiting 25 years to share that story with Mr. Berryman, and he laughed and we took several photos together. In this one, we are assuming the position. Strangely, the photos were taken by Priscilla Barnes, from the last few seasons of THREE'S COMPANY, with my disposable camera. I made Michael laugh even harder by offering to be a Mini-Michael in his next horror film. I also met the guy who was Clint Eastwood's sidekick in the films with the orangutan....Wayne

An Occurrence at the Dan Ryan Woods

2006-08-01T03:26:00.000-05:00

It hit 117 degrees inside the print shop tonight, the heat index wasn't much lower outside, but that's not the story, chief. Its' the two year anniversary of my mugging at 87th & Western on the way home from a reading at the Red Lion. I missed the last bus to Cicero, planned to walk the 52 blocks from Western, and got punched in the face by a midget high on marijuana who wore a ring that had a double deuce set of dice on it. The kid couldn't figure out why I wasn't falling down, but my right side had yet to even register pain. A passing car called 911, the cops turned their sirens on and the kids ran off with nothing but my rolled up copy of Avengers #500. Yea, yea, I read DC, but I also read anything by Brian Michael Bendis. The cop was kind enough to take a few photos of me on his cell phone and then emailed them. I grayscaled this so no one would be creeped out by what would seem to be grievous injuries. It was mostly blood slicked by sweat on a night not unlike tonight. I've cut myself shaving and gotten worse scars. Oh, and I found out that enamel paper at the print shop is like razor sharp. But taking a webcam shot of my finger would be dull after you've seen the above shot. Maybe one day I'll post the photo from my groin injury. The stitches broke open and I was able to put my finger inside up to the first joint. If enough people comment, you'll get to see the photo, or one with just the stitches, or later, the staples. Finally, they used glue. But I digress. Go vote!...Wayne

Goodnight, Saigon

2006-07-31T00:35:00.000-05:00

I had never heard this song by Billy Joel before, but two lines still stay in my memory from when I heard it this morning up in Wonder Lake. We came in spastic like tameless horses, we left in plastic as numbered corpses. I do not save photos of dead soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. When I was in college, before the full realizations of my cerebral palsy became clear, I had envisioned myself as a foreign war correspondent. Writing and dying in Lebanon. And the world continued to revolve....Wayne

I Didn't Name the Place...

2006-07-28T01:02:00.000-05:00

and besides, the tavern at 17th and Pulaski is gone now. Gotta love the 4 Hour Nap slogan at the Miami, which I pass on the way to work every day. The Darlington is in Uptown and one would think it's a safe place, considering the exterior...Wayne

Grab & Gulp

2006-07-27T01:49:00.000-05:00

Not exactly sure why this photo turned out so tiny, I was sitting right next to the guy when he was digging through the garbage. Again, I believe this was a Homeland Security employee, and in the second photo, he is reporting his findings via plastic cup from Subway...Wayne

Myron Noodleman

2006-07-26T22:50:00.000-05:00

There is a long story involving having to delete my previous post, something to do with the Homeland Security Act. Good thing we have people like Mr. Noodleman patting down patrons at the Kane County Cougar minor league ball games...Wayne

Back in 1980 Again...

2006-07-25T01:08:00.000-05:00

Well, the top photo proves that Dan has not aged a bit since the last web log entry was posted, and the second photo shows the kind of cheap fun using one of those Kodak Disk cameras (remember those?). That's me holding up the album cover. If only I had hair like that...Christ knows I have the gaunt, zombie face to go with it. More soon. Wayne

Be Careful What You Ask For...

2006-07-24T00:24:00.000-05:00

My oldest chum, Danbo from CDW, sent me an email about my not having added a new post in a week. Nothing new has occurred in my life, there have been no horrendous Chicago anniversaries, so I found the perfect photo of Dan and I circa 1980. Hard to see in the photo, but Dan is drinking M*A*S*H beer and I have a Bikini Cola (maybe in our drunkenness, I was chosen to be the designated driver even though everybody was gathered in my own house back on 85th & Pulaski). Dan still looks pretty much the same, hasn't aged at all. In 1980 I was either mistaken for Bernard Goetz, the NYC Subway Shooter, or if I was clean-shaven, Michael Berryman, the killer in the original version of THE HILLS HAVE EYES. What I would give to be able to go through life looking like Ernest Borgnine or Morey Amsterdam...everyone enjoy your week. Wayne

Things To Read in Denver

2006-07-15T22:19:00.000-05:00

Ed Bryant told me late that December night, after all the copies of FOR YOU, THE LIVING were signed and more than a few were sold, that Speck had died. For decades, just that one quick syllable, an errant sound effect, meant memories to Chicago. TessLass ran me around various parts of Capitol Hill in her powder blue VW so that I could find a copy of the Post or the Rocky Mountain News. It was very strange to read the obituary with the word Illinois in it, making it seem like I was much farther away than I was, and somehow more time had passed. I can't put it into simpler terms. Seeing that headline made me more aware than at any other time, before or since, that I was not in Chicago. I'm always here, this is what purgatory is. Things to read in Denver when you're dead...Wayne

40 Years Ago

2006-07-15T05:29:00.000-05:00

This was the guy who started everybody locking their doors in Chicago. Shown is the original police bulletin that my father gave me a copy of years later, the townhouse near Luella Park where the nurses were murdered, and the cover of the Boneyard Press book I wrote that was published in 1992. The next post will kind of bookend this one...Wayne

Sleepy Time

2006-07-14T01:16:00.000-05:00

How I feel after three days of working 12 hour shifts at the printing plant. With two more weeks to go. I read a lot and watch the copier make 36,000 copies. I'll buy a laptop with the overtime dough, but for now I can hardly think past the title of the book above my text. Wayne

,,,And Tallow

2006-07-12T01:12:00.000-05:00

The things you come across when you turn the corner in downtown Chicago...Wayne

Abandon Ye All Hope

2006-07-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

Well, I was evidently trespassing, and sadly, people drown in this sludge the same way they do by crawling through holes in fences and jumping into park swimming areas unsupervised after hours. I honestly don't know why anyone would want to be hunting rabid raccons, which I have been told come by the back of the building to sniff at the discarded Marlboro and Camel butts (now that sounds wrong). 4th on the list of no-nos, I'll leave that to my pundit pals. Wayne

Cal Sag Road

2006-07-09T10:32:00.000-05:00

On the other side of the bridge is Cal Sag Road, at about the point of this sign, you can start smelling about three different kinds of bachelor ass on a rainy day. Never went over the bridge, so I can't tell you if there are any Bed & Breakfast places run by dolphin-shaped hosts & hostesses. The top photo is the shoreline far below. You got a line, I got a pole, we'll go fishin' at the Cal Sag hole...Wayne

Cal Sag Channel

2006-07-09T01:46:00.000-05:00

In keeping with the past post, I finally got a chance to get up to that bridge and the evil waters that lurk beneath. Just one of the south suburbs many tourist attractions...Wayne

Tess Lass To The Rescue

2006-07-09T01:35:00.000-05:00

If I do this right, here is a link to that crazy post Mike Fountain put on his web blog about my new job. Fingers crossed I don't activate Skynet & The Terminator program as I do this... http://michaelfountain.blogspot.com/2006/06/waynes-new-job.html. I'm sure someone will tell me if Doomsday is nigh. Wayne

Moon and Sun at the North Pole

2006-07-07T00:42:00.000-05:00

I can't add anything here that could be remotely meaningful. Wayne

Sid Is Alive!

2006-07-07T00:17:00.000-05:00

If you see my chart regarding voting for your favorite actor, Sidney Williams is now beating out Aunt Esther by a comfortable margin. There is a movie out on VHS that is VERY scarce, called JAMES BLOND, and the above photos are from deleted scenes from said film. Sid is also a great writer, as well as fictional street hustler Willy Sid (along with his girlfriend Lisa Sestina) in my Chicago stories. There is a link to his website on my web blog. His novels include NIGHT BROTHERS and AZRAEL, he has young adult novels, including DEADLY DELIVERY, under the name Michael August, and wrote the acclaimed comic series THE MANTUS FILES. Think if the part of James Rockford was played by Max Von Sydow...seeya. Wayne

Ain't That America?

2006-07-04T23:17:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite John Mellencamp lines, from "Pink Houses." The first photo is painted on the side of the Canal Street Self-Storage, and its not centered because I snapped it from a speeding el, the second photo is from the Faces display in Union Station, and the last photo is of a mangled squad car on 9/11. I am aware that the 343 firefighters who died that day were more heroic in their efforts, but as the son of a cop, I'm still mildly angry at the fact that so little mention was made of the 108 police officers who also died. My father was ten feet away from the fuselage of the American Airlines flight that missed Midway Airport by seven blocks in December of 1972. Ten feet away, watching people melt as the main engines blew up. He fought to help survivors out, part of the plane had landed on a garage. He still has frostbite in one foot from standing in frozen sludge for hours. Never filed for disability, because that's not what James Leland Sallee would do. Our house smelled like smoke and blood for days. The bombing of the Murrah Building in 1995 did not make me recall the Midway crash as 9/11 did, I guess because it was planes hitting the WTC that brought it all back. And a lot of cops died that day. Firefighters, too. Doing what needs to be done. Well, we made it to our 230th birthday. Cheers. ...Wayne

Long May She Wave

2006-07-04T02:24:00.000-05:00

Everybody reading this have a safe holiday. I hope I don't see Travesty McGee or Marty Mundt on FOX News Live...and, yea, that's part of my house on the right. The left side is the creepy old late widow Debo's foreclosed house. Wayne

Fullerton Avenue Bleed Out

2006-07-04T01:41:00.000-05:00

I went to the Red Lion tonight to see Mike Fountain and also read at open mike; I'll be changing shifts at my job and it will be a long time before I am up north during the week again. It was hot enough to get my head rolling inside out; that X-Ray shows how messed up my head got when I was hit by the car in '89. All I can do is let it bleed out, as in this photo from 2004. (Wednesday I am getting anti-inflammatory injections in my neck and back, and my entire upper body sort of loosens up in a way I cannot truly explain). I barely drank one Stella Artois, but stopped because my words were slurring from the roaring in my ears. I am tired and sad and lonely because I shared the el trains with females who were at the fireworks show after Taste of Chicago. I again wonder why God wants me to stick around. Surely not to yank out the old Scarlet Sponge photo album...Wayne

Garland Court

2006-07-03T18:07:00.000-05:00

Agent Herb, ever at his post up north, questioned if my odd city photos should be collected in a book. Perhaps if the city kept tearing itself down and rebuilding, I could come up with a decent angle. This here photo is of the alley just south of the Chicago Theater, and I am facing west, towards the lake. I wish the tent was not there, but it does have a doorway, which makes it less maddening to me. Behind the tent is the Garland Building, where a young John Wayne Gacy cruised for pickups in his pre-serial killer with a crawlspace days. This was in a basement, no-tell bar. Beyond that is the Amoco Building and after that you'll end up near St. Joe, Michigan. History lesson this time, Herb. Give the Col. my best, and the same to your lovely wife. Wayne

No Four Day Weekend For Me

2006-07-03T00:12:00.000-05:00

So I'll simply post my abstract thoughts. The red building--the CNA Plaza--is the 4th, my day off. The rubble in front of it is what I have to climb over starting in about 5 hours to get there. The el train in the background is a nice touch, don't you think? ...Wayne

Get Rythym

2006-07-01T12:57:00.000-05:00

A few people emailed me today about my previous entry regarding typing to music. My usual one-liner is that, since part of my right hip is grafted into my left forearm, I can get to typing pretty quick to some old rockabilly or decent Cash or Elvis. I laugh about that until I actually rub the area under the keloid scar where the hip bone is like a hidden or misplaced bolt. But, where I never did get a blog entry up regarding the things I wanted to buy with my first decent paychecks in 16 months, I'll add that I did get out to Best Buy and picked up Cash's LOVE GOD MURDER, the first three CDs from his Americana series. THE MAN COMES AROUND, pictured left, is the fourth CD I have worn out if there is a way to wear out a CD, but I really want the fifth and last of the series, which includes the songs recorded in his last days here. I only can type to the murder songs, many are ballads, and it puts me in a good mindset. I am so familiar with the songs, they are more soothing than distracting. What that says of me, well, I think Mr. Cash might have understood. ...Wayne

Friday Night Brain Innards

2006-07-01T00:05:00.000-05:00

I should be out enjoying myself, its in the 70s and I have some decent cabbage from my OT at work this week. Instead, I'm at my typewriter, working on projects while keeping Johnny Cash's "Cocaine Blues" on repeat on my CD player just because I can type faster with the rhythm..and the inside of my brain has different thought patterns with intersecting lines and odd walls. The two people are probably my id and superego, ya got me...Wayne

Fiends By Torchlight...Twice

2006-06-28T23:57:00.000-05:00

My thanks to Greg Loudon for his work on this. The cover that will be used will be painted and the collection should be out in time for the August period of late summer ennui. Greg's stuff is at www.desolateangels.net, and Annihilation Press, run by Roger Dale Trexler in a small room more hideously cluttered than mine, is at www.annihilationpress.com. I'm scaring myself. Wayne

It Was Della and The Dealer...

2006-06-25T23:35:00.000-05:00

and a dog named Jake, and a cat named Kalamazoo. Well, Mike Fountain teaches some oddball class in that Michigan town, and he has nothing to do with the Hoyt Axton lyrics quoted here. You can go to his website at http://michaelfountain.org and see how he bastardized my last blog entry into a scene from North By Northwest. You'd think he'd have least picked a Mitchum flick. This is Mike above, back in the days when he was posing for postcard sketches naked from the waist down. Or so I've heard. ...Wayne

Dr. Richard Kimble, Fugitive

2006-06-24T16:00:00.000-05:00

I might as well be on the run seeing as how I've been out of contact with just about everybody for the past three and a half weeks. I've mentioned the new job at the printshop out in Alsip, and how humorous it might seem that I am the only passenger the bus driver leaves off at the I-94 interchange, as if I was hastily avoiding a roadblock further up near the Cal-Sag Bridge. The top photo shows how I then descend to the street below and walk towards my job at a dead end street in an industrial park. But after 15 months of being unemployed, I'll take all the overtime offered, and so I have just completed my third straight week of working 55 hours. Any free time at home has been mostly on writing projects or blowing paper dust from my nose and ears. The computer I work operates a Xerox Nuvera that prints 6,600 pages a minute. 15 months of looking for work I am qualified for and then I get a job I have never been qualified for, yet seem to be pulling it off. Like Dr. Kimble becoming a fugitive, and staying one step of Lt. Gerard for four years. (Of course, I am the one-armed man, too, as I type with only two fingers.) But here I am, checking in. Still around, a few bills current, and the cars driving along I-94 towards Indiana still scratch their heads at the guy with the satchel and jacket, most drivers not know there is a bus stop sign there. ...Wayne

It's Not Just For Fathers

2006-06-18T00:46:00.000-05:00

I am Ashley's godfather. Some of my coolest memories of the last 13 3/4 years have involved hanging out with her. Seeing her get a story, "The Moon Wolf," published in DARK OFFSPRING back in 2001. Hearing her play the first song she learned on her electric guitar, the theme from HALLOWEEN. Stuff like that I'll remember until the Alzheimer's kicks in. Happy Father's Day, all you guys you have this day named for you! Wayne

Caveman Looked Like Elvis

2006-06-18T00:43:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess this proves it.

Back When I Was With The Elvis Band...

2006-06-15T20:51:00.000-05:00

NOT! But it still got your attention. Going back to our man in Madison, once upon a time we were on a bus going to the end of nowhere on a dead-end street and we saw this guy thoroughly involved in this book here. After I took his photo, he started crying out something about "52 is coming!" There's an in-joke and a punchline there, depending on who is reading this post. Wayne

From Chicago to Madison via Cape Fear

2006-06-15T20:39:00.000-05:00

The big man in Madison, the dinosaur hunter, said I wasn't posting enough good girl art. I pretty much only have whacked out girl art. So here you go, chief, and everybody else, too. No need to thank me...Max Cady

Raccoon Kids

2006-06-14T22:52:00.000-05:00

I am sorry. I am just having a ball working 56 hours a week, washing my jeans and socks, and posting these goofy covers...Wayne

Lights, Camera...

2006-06-13T23:52:00.000-05:00

Can't use the word Action because, after all, that's actually one of the Superman titles. But I can't just single out 'ol Big Blue out on these funnybook stories that we should all write home about. Holy Bestiality, Batman!

I Got Nothin'

2006-06-12T23:17:00.000-05:00

Anyone want to help me out here?

Brokeback Metropolis

2006-06-11T23:56:00.000-05:00

OK, OK, enough with spooky buildings. Let's just show some funny book covers for awhile...sadly, I owned this comic once. For those who don't buy comics, Action is almost at issue #850 and the current comic book price is about $2.99.

Sid's Zoe Building

2006-06-11T15:35:00.000-05:00

Sid Williams has been working on a novel called ZOE'S MISSING, and we actually got into a whole Waverly Hills discussion back when he was first working on several climactic chapters. He found a cool building someplace in the Dallas area. In a way, it kinda reminds me of Cook County Hospital, only with better upkeep.

The Old Wabash Castle

2006-06-11T11:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Greg Loudon came by to do the photo shoot for the cover of my Annihilation Press collection FIENDS BY TORCHLIGHT. I truly wish these ruins were still at Wabash and Cullerton and we could have taken some shots there. This building had been a brewery, and the cornerstones and a partial wall was still standing until the late 1980s. It is now a parking lot for one of the newer buildings that have cropped up here, the street between State & Michigan, and a bit further north, the el runs above it. Thankfully, the new building isn't a condo, but an architecture firm. In the color photo, at the intersection on the right side, was the seediest currency exchange I have ever seen.

Excedrin Lights Out

2006-06-10T22:39:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted all week because I put in a 56 hour week at the print shop, enjoying the heck out of it, but leaving me with little blogging time. Writing comes first, reruns of DANCING WITH THE STARS second, then and only then can I blog. But after 15 months of no work to 56 hours away from the computer--24 hours in two days at one point--I started feeling like I might hunt this new product out with my first paycheck. (It's not real, all you guys who take me seriously); it's from www.theonion.com which I am lucky enough to get free from newsstands here in Chicago. Love to hold pages in my hands, not just stare at a computer screen. Mostly because I am still on dial-up and could probably play 8-tracks on my D drive if I really tried. Tom Jones Live, anyone? Which brings us back to the photo above, ha ha. Wayne

Waverly Hills, Sci-Fi & Sid Is Alive!

2006-06-05T21:21:00.000-05:00

Willy Sid (or Sid Tyler, when he is playing East Texas playboy) gave me the dilly-o on a spook special on Sci-Fi about my favorite Kentucky haunting ground. (Pay close attention to that blob on the bottom of the photo, which was taken in March of 1992.) If I get the link right it is http://www.scifi/spooked You've seen other shots of this place a few posts back. Its up on a bluff where you might see "them Draculs and Am'tyville thangs." But you can also see the words SID IS ALIVE in red at the base of the sanitorium. Check out www.sidisalive.com for the origin. And the man comes around. Seeya, Wayne

I Am Working Again

2006-06-03T22:25:00.000-05:00

Thanks to my really neat & cool friend, Joe Curtin, author of DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON and the upcoming MONSTERMAN (which I honestly believe is the best werewolf novel since James Blish's novel(la) THERE SHALL BE NO DARKNESS, written back in 1954. I'll be working at In-Print Graphics and I'll have the shortest commute to work in my life, 40 blocks south on Cicero. No more getting off the Metra train and having to walk around some gated community, if you recall my rant about my inventory job. I did take a photo of that place from the train but was too broke to get the photos developed until recently. This craphole here is called Turnburry Estates. If I get my hand caught in the printing press or somesuch melodrama, I'll have my camera ready as I continue to chronicle my waning first fifty years on this planet.

Faith Fay

2006-05-30T23:42:00.000-05:00

There's this TV show called LOST and BenBella books hired me to write a glossary for their July release GETTING LOST. I plowed through it all winter, coming up with 640 entries; medical terms, theories, characters, actors, the definition of being a clinical psychologist, which I now know to be the most evil profession of all after meth dealer at the local junior high. One of the background castaways on the Island is portrayed by Faith Fay, who was pleased to hear of her entry under 'F', and who aside from acting does some pretty decent photography and a few other artistic endeavors. www.faithfay.com. Its all about networking, right? Your chattel, Wayne

Client...Good!

2006-05-30T22:50:00.000-05:00

OK, so what is wierder? There's an attorney in Riverside Plaza named Robert Frankenstein, but look at the chick above him. I'd hate to think that she was in theater and that was her stage name.

Dante's Inferno?

2006-05-29T22:04:00.000-05:00

Nope. Just a b&w photo of Earth as taken from the surface of Mars. I had attempted to follow up my previous post of small town America being swallowed up, and it seems I have now created the image of the Earth itself being swallowed up a bigger force. Maybe it's the Ikea subdivision of the WalMart Federation of Planets...Wayne

Places You Only See Once

2006-05-29T00:32:00.000-05:00

Several days ago, I went to a family funeral out in what we used to call the sticks or the boondocks. The closest big town would be Elgin. But it was the town itself that was in the boondocks, because there is development all over the place, filling in every gap between the Northwest Tollway and I-80, Illinois' great serial killer drive-thru. The night of the wake, I walked through town, seeing what the place looked like before the developers came along in the 1980s. Checked out the library, the feed stores, and the old hardware place. There were heavy thunderstorms on the 90 minute ride back east, but out there in the dark, lit up in intervals by lightning, were huge chunks of lifeless subdivisions, blobs of the same color every few miles, all the way back to Chicago.

Take The Last Train To Clarksville

2006-05-26T00:19:00.000-05:00

Actually, the story was "Last Ship To Orion," and the cover creeped the heck out of me as a kid. I was staying the night in a trailer out in Streator and it was the only thing I had to read, having picked it up at Safrzyks (sa-FAR-checks) up on Hall Street. Now I am officially done with dogs and women wrestlers. Seeya next time, Wayne

You Thought I Was Through With The Doggies...

2006-05-21T01:10:00.000-05:00

I thought I was, too. But someone needs to tell Stacy Kiebler that there's a giant mutt coming right at her. The sad thing here is, the really sad thing....if that was a clown behind her I would crap my pants. Great first impressions and all...

Hound Dog and Old Shep

2006-05-20T00:34:00.000-05:00

Chris from over dere up by Madison not the other Chris the girl one who I know through Cheetarah's blog, Chris he said if I post another pooch pic it'd be like the trifecta at Balmoral. So here we are, almost back at the start. The dog is Von's beloved Chanci, and it's not really important why I am wearing an Elvis jumpsuit or those damnable Larry King glasses. Von was living in Roselle then, the World Fantasy Convention for 1993 was nearby, and those in the room were Kathleen Jurgens and Marthayn Peligramis, editors of THIN ICE, and Peter Enfantino and John Scolari, editors of THE SCREAM FACTORY. I had brought the jumpsuit with me to the convention because a not-to-be-named writer wanted to borrow it and play dress up for his knockout wife. I got the thumbs up, rather the TCB (Takin' Care of Business), sign from Do...oops. So I believe the night with Ly...oops, was a success. I wore the jumpsuit--the one I inherited after the Elvis impersonater I worked with got busted--because I knew it would be good for a laugh, would baffle the hell out of Chanci, and I really wasn't certain that I would get it back with all kinds of man juice on it. There's your third dog post, Chris up dere in Madison, not the cute Chris down south, so maybe you should buy a Powerball ticket tomorrow.

And You'd Think Burbank Was Safe...

2006-05-17T23:24:00.000-05:00

I mentioned my dogs in the previous post; I had a collie my oldest niece named Barbie, so that was that. And here is the photo I end up posting. I moved from Chicago in the summer of 1999, when Barbie was four, because I got tired of living across the street from a kid who ran a crack house while his mother worked in City Hall and several instances involving semi-automatic weapons on neighbors front porches made me worried more about my nieces than my somewhat-immortal self. I think a little of my "Unbreakableness" rubbed off on my dog. I'm now five blocks east of the big, bad city, in bucolic Burbank. I turned 40 on 9/9/99 and three days later, my dog started barking when two local thugs tried to steal something from the widow Debo's garage. (After she died, her son sold the place, and it became that Czech rabbit farm for awhile). One of the guys--they both were caught at another garage break-in--stabbed Barbie twice to try and shut her up, so I can imagine what might've happened to frail Ruth Debo. The vet put tampons into the puncture wounds and later put 211 stitches into my dog. He took the tampons out and inserted a kind of rope inside of Barbie, and I would pull on either side of the rope several times a day to keep the blood from clotting. Through that winter, Barbie wore my Superman t-shirt so her wounds would stay covered. She survived, but died of cancer three years ago yesterday. The photo I posted is one that reminds me of the vileness in so many humans. I would force feed Barbie crushed codiene tablets and lay on the living room floor with her as she whined, not truly understanding what had happened to her. I felt cheated that, after surviving the stabbing, that cancer would take her so soon after. I have had dogs that lived over the course of three decades. But I will always remember sleeping with my collie in the Superman shirt for weeks on end...Wayne

Today's Not Just About Moms & Kids

2006-05-14T23:24:00.000-05:00

I know more couples, married or just plain shacking up, who have no kids. They have dogs and cats, the occasional goldfish. I myself have a border collie with one blue eye and one brown eye who seems to think he is related to the rabbits that were left behind when my Czech neighbors were evicted. Never mind why they had rabbits in a big cage in their yard. As usual, I've gotten off-topic. So... My good friend, my oldest writing friend going back to pre-dot matrix printers, even, Yvonne Navarro sent me an email a week ago with the subject simply being LILY. I understood what I was about to open. Lily had died. Von had bought Lily several years ago from a place on the West Coast, and she was deaf. Typical of Von, to do something good like that. Soon after, she and her husband Wes bought Goblin, the one Von is taking to the mat in the first shot. When I first saw photos of Lily, I thought back fifteen years to when Von still lived in Chicago, and she had this dog named Chanci, she'd get her to stand on his back paws, she'd point an imaginary gun, BANG! and she fell backwards, playing dead in the coolest way a dog could ever play dead. (I thought of the old broad getting revenge one day by screwing the alarm clock up or flushing the toilet with her paw when his mistress was in the shower, her little dog thought balloon reading "Feeling lucky...Von?" I wish I had the chance to see Von & Lily as I had Von & Chanci over the years. I printed out a photo of Lily and hung it on my fridge for my nieces to see, allowing me to then tell funny Von stories, but my hermaphrodite border collie Buddy the Mitch got jealous and/or hungry because I'm pretty certain I had left butter fingerprints on the edge of the printout. He grabbed at the photo and by now you must know I have a camera ready at almost all times; except for that one time I saw Elvis in that UFO with Marilyn MON-roe. So, I mourn for Von. I sincerely hope that Lily is indeed with Chancy, and might run into all my other dogs (not all named by me; don't judge) like Barbie, Mindy, Squirt, Sandy, and Pebbles. My "Ratpack" folder still has photos of all the dogs and cats that Von and Deke and Larry & Tycelia and Willy Sid & Christine have had over the years. I don't mind cats, but the thing I like most about dogs is that they are always happy to see someone awake in the middle of the night when they are. I'll bet Lily was like that. Because Von never stops typing even though she types at 200 WPM but probably needs to get a glass a water sometimes. As I do, now. And I'm lifting my glass to the best woman I've ever known, Vanna Varo in my stories, by the way. Yvonne and Lily. Always in my mind, Wayne

That Kinda Day

2006-05-11T22:23:00.000-05:00

I try not to be political on this blog, just make general observations and make people think about my strange life in this very strange city I live in with all kinds of bird flu warnings and phone call and library card, and yes, even my Borders Reward card monitoring. So take what you will from the attached posters. It's that kinda day. Wayne

How I Taught Ashley To Read

2006-05-10T19:30:00.000-05:00

This was about 1994. The book has B&W stills from the movie and word balloon dialogue. Ashley's favorite part was when the two drunks crashed their cars into each other and were eaten by the monster. The only other book this company made (I think it was the FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND guys) was THE MOLE PEOPLE. John Agar in the starring role. Oddly enough, I did not get yelled at for letting her "read" the book. Uncle Wayne

Crippled And Insane, I Am The American Dream

2006-05-09T17:27:00.000-05:00

I finally was able to get my very very very very (you get the idea) slow computer to load the photo of Evan Shustak and his sidekick, Blind Justice, who really isn't there. H.E.Fassl of Oak Park took the photo near the burned out tire factory on Cermak Road which can be seen near the end of the film BACKDRAFT. Harry also is responsible for that b&w double exposure a few posts back. The American Dream solved a few oddball mysteries, including "Smile For The Wild," where he fought his arch-enemy The All-Nighter, in SEQUITER#1, published by *ahem* Rachel Drummond, and "Derby Geeks And The Thunder Chiefs" in PALACE CORBIE#19, which takes place during the infamous Loop Flood of April 1992. He is still out there patrolling, and only Reve Towne knows his true identity. You guys just think you do. Wayne

Blame It On The Moon

2006-05-09T01:37:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't be typing this right now if there was not a spell-check feature; going through a rough patch with my spasming, so I'm down to one finger typing very slowly as I bite quite intensely one a toothpick. I write about a character called The American Dream, pictured here, who has journal entries in his narratives bereft of spell-check, as I started writing about Evan Shustak with his heating-pad cape and wrist splint fighting gloves back in the 80s on my Smith-Corona Galaxy Twelve manual typewriter. That's kind of off the point, but the character is mildly insane from his chronic pain, and it kind of leads me back to the beginning of my entry. While I had my collie Buddy the Mitch in the backyard, I noticed a full moon, and maybe that was a reason for several replies to my Waverly Fields entry. My cousin Lori corrected me, it is indeed Waverly HILLS in real life, I had changed it for my story and kind of misplaced the reality of it in my head, and Mike Fountain, who did an enthralling slideshow viewing of the history of tarot cards at the Red Lion last month, sent several really cool comments, which I suggest any of you to go back and read. I have good days and I have bad days and then I have REALLY bad PORTIONS of days where my pain is so bad and my small motor function is so intensely excrutiating, that I fell like I need to be strapped down in a bed like Lon Chaney Jr. as doomed Larry Talbot. I wait for the intensity of this pain to subside, avoiding narcotics or alcohol, as if it was a phase of the moon. More than once, I've compared werewolves to alcoholics, you feel pity for them, but in most cases, they are not anything to be scared of. The meltdowns on the city streets, I mean, not the wife beaters in the townhouses and tract houses throughout the land. Anyone who raises a hand to someone inferior needs a silver bullet in his balls. I leave you with a great quote I passed on to Mike, from the actor Lionel Atwill, in 1944: "See---one side of my face is gentle and kind, incapable of anything but love of my fellow man. The other side, the other profile, is cruel and predatory and evil, incapable of anything but the lusts and dark passions. It all depends on which side faces the moon at the ebb of the tide." I'm out here somewhere...Wayne

This Was My AOL Profile Page

2006-05-08T01:12:00.000-05:00

Stately Wayne Manor

How I Screwed Myself To The Bottom
5 time Finalist HWA Bram Stoker award, Finalist for Rhysling Award and OxFarm Poetry Award...11 Appearances YEAR'S BEST HORROR...47 Honorable Mentions YEAR'S BEST FANTASY and HORROR...Doing Business As: Tony Mitchum, Skip Tracer, Jonny Algiers, P.I....Previous jobs: Dishwasher at Mafia front, Bat-Pal at Crestwood Cemetery, PR man for incarcerated Elvis pre-bloat impersonator, crash test dummy since Saturday,March 18th, 1989, 11:11 A.M.

Frankenstein's Monsters
Rapid Transit,1985;Take The A Train,1986;Bleeding Between The Lines,1987;THE SUBURBS OF FEAR,1988; Narcopolis,1999;DRINKING BUDDIES,1990;Faded Dreams of Division Street,1991;THE HOLY TERROR, 1992;FOR YOU,THE LIVING,1992;PAIN GRIN,1993; Bullets Can't Stop It!,1994,LOVER DOLL,1994;Bumpy Face,1995;Mirror,Mirror,1995;WITH WOUNDS STILL WET,1996,Fiends By Torchlight,1996;Chicago Clair de Lune,1998;MY DESCENT,2000;TALES OF THE SCARLET SPONGE,2001;Roustabout,2002;In The Shank of The Night,2003,INSANITIZED STREETS,2004; GIRL WITH THE CONCRETE HANDS,2004; MARNIE'S, NEAR MORNING, CITY OF NO SECOND CHANCES

Anthologies, Magazines & Comics
Agony In Black,Beatniks From Space,Blood & Donuts Borderlands 2,Cemetery Dance,Chicago By Night, Constable New Crimes I & II,Crafty Cat Crimes, Cyber-Psychos,Dante's Disciples,Dark Destiny, Darkside:Tales For The New Millenium, Deathrealm, Dracula:Prince of Darkness,Dream Wolves,Flesh Creepers,Freaks, Geeks & Sideshow Floozies, Gorezone,Grue,Horrors!,Impetus,It Came From The Drive-In!,Le Petit Mort,Little Deaths, Masques, Mojo Risin',More Phobias, Murder For Father,New Blood,Nightmares on Elm Street,Penthouse,Quick Chills I & II,Richard Speck,Scream Factory,Seeds of Fear,Sex Crimes,Splatterpunks I & II,Svoboda's A Great Read, Vampire Detectives,Writing Horror,2 A.M., 100 Vicious Little Vampire Stories, The Anatomy of Desire, Sex Crimes II, Hell In The Heartland

Waverly Hills & Werewolves

2006-05-08T00:06:00.000-05:00

This place used to be a sanitarium on a bluff above Louisville, Kentucky. My father's family live in Shelbyville, thirty miles east. They kept tuberculosis patients there and incinerated them after they died, their ashes dumped in the Ohio River. It's a long story on how I came to have these photos, but each is haunting in its own way. I use Waverly Fields as a setting in one of my longer stories, "Go Hungry," about a guy who inherits the werewolf gene from his dad and Huntingdon's Chorea from his mom. Is a supernatural or a human inherited disease worse? I implement the facts of the TB epidemic of 1934 as being "stopped" because of my character Napier's grandfather's werewolf clan killing off potential TB carriers. If I could actually type faster and not use one finger, I might have followed up the initial story as a novel, with Napier's family wanting to kill him because the Huntingdon's disease was making him change into a wolf when he had petit mal seizures and the Chicago media was picking up on werewolf sightings around Grant Park. I've always thought werewolf stories were cooler than vampire stories. Vampires are made out to be glamorous, and I compare werewolves to alcoholics. Imagine Ray Milland in THE LOST WEEKEND if he was trying to keep from killing a victim by locking himself in that Manhattan apartment and then throwing away the key. Aaaaooouuuuu....Wayne

First Time Visitors...

2006-05-07T15:19:00.000-05:00

Hi. After all the multiple mass emails attempting to draw attention that I then had to correct, the last one involving a comma instead of a period, if you want to write me in person instead of comment on the blog, my current address can be seen in the attached blueprint. There isn't an empty bed yet, so just address it c/o the laundry room. Calm yet insane, Wayne

Maybe NASCAR Will Be Next?

2006-05-07T14:19:00.001-05:00

This will likely be a boring post, but it will finish off what I had babbled about a few days back. I lucked out by not having to spend the 42 degree night huddled in the Hanover Park Metra station because my friend Dan let me stay at his place and he dropped me off before 6 AM before zigzagging back to HIS stop at the Villa Park station. For six hours I worked in a lift truck, counting inventory on light fixtures that eventually would be sold to a place in Conyers GA. Here I am operating a truck (thankfully not a forklift), even though I don't have and never will have a driver's license of any kind. I figured that if I can drive on a go-cart track during one of Beth Massie's Pseudocons, then I can go three stories into the air and not topple over. I only got scared when I had to back up, because I kept losing my balance. The only bad thing about the job was that there was no place to stash anything, so for the first time in recorded history, I was not lugging a black satchel around with my notebook and comics and paperbacks and eyedrops and Rice Krispie Treats. So I wore a suit jacket over my black t-shirt so I'd have pockets for my FIJI water bottle and my copy of H. Jefferson Parker's CALIFORNIA GIRL to read on the way back home. As described earlier, my trek back to the Metra station was similarly long, yet in the opposite direction. I looked like Frankenstein dressed like a hobo as I somehow walked past the Schaumburg Flyers minor league park (how I missed THAT on Thursday is beyond me) on the way to the train. I have no real photos to post for this convoluted and dull end to my story, but I'll find one of my favorite demolition pics instead. Figure its how the inside of my body was over the last few days, all the rubble and stuff being bone fragments and dead brain synapses. Wayne

The Computer Remains My Nemesis

2006-05-07T10:06:00.000-05:00

If there ever is a tombstone with my name on it, the above shall be the epitath. Sometimes I long for my ancient letterhead that read I WILL FLATLINE BEFORE I GO ONLINE. I had sent a mass email out yesterday on a (to me) ingenious way for everyone not on Blogger.com to be able to comment. Well, soon after, TessLass and Snake (some code names shall be used purely for nostalgic reasons) emailed back with information on how to change my settings and correct my links, respectively. I had worried about spam, but Larry (not a code name) said that, like he, I could still get spam from other Blogger.comers. OK, anyone who wants to comment on my blog (I'm pasting this as an email soon enough, see) can find me at http://statelywaynemanor.blogspot.com . For those not in the know, you'll have to verify a series of psychedelic letters that usually seem to spell out a medication like Benadryl or Ambien. You can remain anonymous, sign in under your first name, or as some escaped criminal currently being discussed on FoxNews (pretty much a daily thing with them). OK. Task completed. Now I'll wait for my first spam, something along the lines of a claymation BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN involving Gumby & Pokey. It's already been done with cartoon bunnies... Next post will be a follow-up on my job in yuppieland. Seeya soon, Wayne

A Gig's A Gig, Part Deux

2006-05-03T19:40:00.000-05:00

The first part was a mass email, the gist was, I got a job, the quote was used by Jackie Gleason whenever he got small-time work, and Richard Nixon showed him dead aliens at Homestead AFB in 1973. Well, I had the first day of the job today. I took the train to Hanover Park and found that in the years since Vyonne had her myriad VonCon weekends, a huge honking "private" subdivision called Hawthorne Homes had gone up. The directions I had were for people driving, pretty soon "pedestrian" will not even be in the dictionary. I could see the O'Hare-Elgin Expressway and knew I needed to get close to it. I started talking out loud like Tony Soprano, the muddahfuggin fat security guy in his golf cart wouldn't let me through the muddahfuggin subdivision with all its muddahfuggin two-dimensional scenery, retention ponds up the ying yang, geese who looked pretty damn lonely, an enclosed running track, and muddahfuggin Fat Freddy in his security shorts. So I had to walk in the opposite direction, up Springinsguth (named for one of Lovecraft's bowel movements, I'm certain), then down Frontage Road to Irving Park Road, then down Rodenburg and found myself--finally--on Central. In the 100 block, and I needed to be at 1200. Like, in the next ten minutes. And for those of you reading this, friends and family alike, who might think hey why the heck is Wayne so down on us muddahfuggin yuppies, well, at least YOU would pass me by and stop after thinking Now what is that bald headed nutbag doing walking 47 miles away from home? Then you'd give me a ride. Not so the parade of SUVs on Central. Finally, it was synchronicity that clicked in. I got a ride from a Waste Management guy whose ONLY reason for being on Central was to take some Benadryl to another Waste Management worker who was stung by a bee. I made it to work 3 minutes early, even though I had given myself 50 minutes to make it there. I felt a lot like Richard Kimble walking on my own, but there weren't any muddahfuggin yuppies in 1966. The ride home on Metra was sedate. I read a DAREDEVIL comic. Wayne

With Open Eyes

2006-05-02T00:26:00.000-05:00

Just a short note tonight. I have a half-mile walk from the bus stop and it started raining about twelve blocks before the end of the line aka Cicero Avenue & 87th Street. But I love rain now. I had Lasik surgery on my eyes three summers ago, so I threw away those old Larry King glasses but kept the wire frame ones for nostalgia, plus if I ever want to feel like I've taken a hallucinogenic, I can put them on over my corrected vision. Because of my cerebral palsy, my vision had been 30/4000. No typo there, friends. That said, I can look up and watch the rain hit my open eyes, I can follow the rain upward to a vanishing point. To me, being able to do this (after having worn glasses since I was five), it must be what having sex is like (I'm still working on that one) or holding a baby or helping someone cross the street or help an older person read small print. I end up with a smile, not a crazy Joker smile (or even a Lex Luthor smile), just a pleasant relaxed smile and I realize that the rain is hitting my lips and teeth as well as my eyes. The things that can be taken for granted, I tell you. Drying off, I bid you good night. Wayne

2006-04-30T01:07:00.000-05:00

Sid was kind enough to create a new profile photo, and no, those aren't Larry King's glasses I stole. The last photo made me look too much like Lenin. Or a guy in an old Time Tunnel episode where evidently everyone alive looks like Lenin in the far future, only they are purple and have overbites. One day I'll return the favor by helping Sid find someone who doesn't want to be found, which is what I used to do in a past life. Now I am an on-call clown and thankful that I'm not the guys downtown mixing Aqua Velva with the Night Train to make it last longer. Wayne

Ellroy At Last, But With A Friend

2006-04-28T21:26:00.000-05:00

There is a long story behind this guy with the mustache. Years ago, I had expected him to be in the news for opening fire on co-workers or a train car of commuters. He had a violent nature in every manner, and complained about every little thing. I was reading a Superman comic once and, standing near me on the el, he muttered that I should be reading Batman. He disappeared for a few years, and when I saw him again, it was apparent he had had some type of medical procedure. He had lost weight, had a vacant stare similar to my own, and, most importantly, still muttered and complained, but kept to himself. I felt like Miles Bennell in INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS. I call him Ellroy because I used to be afraid to ask him his real name because there was a time he would actually swing out at other passengers and pedestrians. I have been trying to take a photo of him for months and this time I got a lagniappe--somehow the old nicotine-stain bearded meltdown from in front of the County Trust Building ended up in the photo. The only other person I have yet to photograph is this guy who listens to his Walkman, sings on the bus, and always, without fail, has several liters of Tab and drinks from one as he warbles. I'm just saying I don't make these people up, is all. --Wayne

The Following Sea

2006-04-27T19:11:00.000-05:00

I was emailing a friend in Pennsylvania about another writer friend in L.A. who committed suicide early this century. Clinical depression is a bitch, and it really is hard treading the water at times. The phrase 'the following sea' is a nautical term, one meant for boaters to be aware of the waves behind them, not just the path they are headed towards. I often find myself seeing those waves behind me--refer to my Long Thoughts post--and realize that living itself is a daily struggle we all have. I can go to the Red Lion for open mike and be around my closest friends, but eventually I am back to waiting on the el platform with a border collie at home. Buddy the Mitch, Buddy because my nieces wanted him named that, Mitch for Mitchum, thus completing the greatest film star's nickname of Bobby The Mitch. Of late, I have started calling my collie Brokeback Buddy, but that's another story, mostly PG-17. There are many things both great and small that keep me from taking the dirt nap. But it doesn't mean I can't joke, say me and Marty are in front of the Red Lion and I see the Grim Reaper with his scythe gesturing, and I'd say to Marty, "Hey, gotta go. Here's my ride." Your chattel, Wayne

Only The Dead Know Graceland

2006-04-23T23:18:00.000-05:00

If anyone read Chris Turek's comment, he is referring to actual incidents with the Elvis band I did indeed work for from 1979 until 1981, when our star got arrested while stealing VCRs to support his coke habit. Hypothetically, I may have been a part of a group of roadies who, along with the band, had been drinking at the old Prime & Tender on 63rd & Harlem, then went to Brandy's Restaurant at 63rd & Cicero knowing that between eight of us we had about three dollars combined. Everyone ordered steak & eggs, then ran like hell down gangways of the houses around Midway. If I had been a part of that, if it didn't happen on a parallel Earth, I'd say it was the closest I'd felt to being a street thug in a leather jacket bought on Maxwell Street. Maybe my penance has been made, because I gave the ultimate sacrifice in the summer of 1980 while we played Cesar Dovalina's La Margarita's in Bolingbrook nightly for three weeks. I was working the spotlight, standing on two chairs, it was near the close with Brad singing "Can't Help Falling In Love." I'm following him back and forth across the stage, stepping from chair to chair, but at one point, a busboy took one of the chairs to plop his fat @$$ onto as he smoked. I stepped into thin air, I knocked the top part of the light off and recovered by grabbing over the top with my right arm, to keep as much light hitting the stage as possible, only my shirt was this fake silk, polyester, shimmery salmon deal with cuffs halfway up my forearms, and the shirt lit up in seconds. I slapped the flame out against the wall behind me and the drummer just played louder so no one could hear me swearing, the cuff fell away from the sleeve and after the show ended a cute waitress rubbed what I swear was the owner's Preparation H on the burn, but I was never certain. The long gone pink mark reminded me of the damn shirt's color, which really should have been worn by either England Dan or John Ford Coley, not me. There are other tales I have that begin "Back when I was with the Elvis band...", but these are the two Chris brought up. I wish there was a way he could link this to the Second City Cop blog, so that all the coppers might know that Rick Saucedo is playing a benefit at the precinct house at Augusta & Wood this coming Saturday. Cop rock. By the way, the title is a goof on Thomas Wolfe's "Only The Dead Know Brooklyn," and I used the title for an article I eventually sold to Jasmine Sailing's Cyber-Psychos A.O.D. in Denver. I realize that this entry is long, but please consider the subject matter. Wayne has left the blogspot, thank you and goodnight.

Back When I Worked With The Elvis Band...

2006-04-21T23:49:00.000-05:00

We would go see Rick Saucedo perform at Field's Supper Club at 105th and Cicero, around there. He was one of the few impersonators who did the show while Elvis was alive. I saw him tonight at St. Albert the Great, Burbank's Polish church. I hadn't seen him since ChicagoFest, back when Jane Byrne was mayor. He still has a decent voice, but I got to thinking of my days with the SouthSide Jump Band and how the 70s became the 80s in a hole-in-the-wall tavern named Laurel & Hardy's at 63rd and Lawndale, and Brad did the New Year's countdown and I was soon kissed by several dozen women of all ages as I handled the light box above the stage. Saucedo performed two forty minute sets at a cost of ten dollars; I took a trip to the bathroom during the break, doused my face with water, stared in the mirror, and envied that fat bastard from Memphis because he was dead. ...Wayne

High Drama on Halsted Street

2006-04-19T22:38:00.000-05:00

Today a schizo got on the el at Halsted and it took all of ten seconds for him to flip out. There was a stretch of track before the Roosevelt stop, so all the tourists in town from Delaware for the Cubs game had the hippy-hippy shakes. He accused one girl of pouring acid on him in some past life he had. Small world, a guy on the train, Mike with some long Polish last name, works with Larry Santoro. I run into him again, the Mike guy, an hour after the melodrama. The CTA security dude confronted the moon man and he calmed down top an extent. Still ranting, but at least more entertaining. I took a photo and will post it soon; for now, you get the skyline as we see it from the train as it curves towards Roosevelt Road. Bye. Wayne

Back To The Farm

2006-04-18T20:37:00.000-05:00

My cousin Danny sent some very eerie photos, I have a set in color from a different POV, of my grandmother's farm before it was torn down, the shots were taken last Labor Day, when Katrina had already demolished New Orleans. This porch was where Mamaw, my great-grandmother Amanda, would sit in her rocking chair. She passed away in October of 1972 and on the late night drive to Louisville, trying to unsuccessfully beat the reaper as others witnessed her last breath, WJJD kept playing Elvis singing "Burning Love," which was released that day. I'm stuck with memories of that song, bright headlights in a dark as sin night on the interstate, nothing but truckers for company and my face reflected in the rear window amidst a hundred stars in a not-yet polluted sky. The things that stick with you, I tell you. Wayne

Watership Down and the Brothers Grimm

2006-04-15T13:34:00.000-05:00

It's been spring AND summer in the past few days, but today is Saturday, by far the quietest day of the week. A day to start by sitting with my border collie watching rabbits rummage in the front yard of the long-abandoned Hansel & Gretel house next door. It is a day when I can have the same patience as Buddy the Mitch, be content to just watch the rabbits burrow. It was good to do this and not pick up the mystery novel at my side, the dog had long since plopped down on the edge of my little porch, head in paws. After about an hour, the real day started, when the guy next door started working on his motorcycle and those getting ready to host Easter dinner went about making things presentable with their weed-whackers and leaf blowers. The rabbits had retreated into the deserted backyard, the dog and I continued the day's follies indoors. As ever, Wayne

I'm Going To Purgatory For This

2006-04-13T23:49:00.000-05:00

It's Good Friday. I am Roman Catholic and I don't think my attachment will damn me too much. I might have to smoke a few turds in purgatory, but I wanted to share. Wayne