NEW YEAR'S EVE WITH SANTANA

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*****

On New Year’s Eve we chogied on down to Hermosa Beach to be wowed by Santana, who was playing at the Lighthouse. I’d recently interviewed Carlos Santana for my newspaper’s entertainment section and he was so happy with the piece that his publicist sent me a handful of tickets for the midnight show.

Santana was a new face in popular music in those days – wowing them at the Woodstock, NY, festival earlier in the year, then going on to record a string of instrumental hits. We were all so excited that we blew out our budget and purchased tickets to an earlier session so we could treat ourselves to two sets. By all, I mean, Carol and myself; Jack Lishman and Jay Thompkins, a buddy of Jack’s who’d just gotten out of the Navy; Roger and Nancy, Kerry Fahey and a knockout blonde chemistry major; and Stoner Tom, who was dateless, but looking.

We had a wonderful time – sitting so close to the band that the conga drums riffled our hair – and although we couldn’t afford a lot of drinks, we kept sneaking out to the parking lot to share a doobie, thus keeping the mood intact. At the midnight show Mr. Santana sent us all a round of drinks and must have said something to the bartender because the drinks kept flowing after that. By midnight we were all ripped and having as good time as any human being could possibly have on a Santana New Year’s Eve.

We piled into the back of Jack’s old hearse and headed home. Led by Kerry, we sang Irish ballads  – “the best sort of tune for a whole lot of drunks to sing,” Kerry swore. If the cops had stopped us they’d have had a wonderful time as the backdoors of the hearse swung out, accompanied by a thick cloud of marijuana smoke and a horde of giggling, drunken young people - a favorite target of the cops in any era.

But the gods of Santana remained with us and we found our way back to Venice without incident, except that Stoner Tom proposed to the girl he’d picked up at the Lighthouse and she’d replied, “Can’t we fuck first?”

He’d said, “My dear, a lady does not say fuck unless she intends to.”

And she’d said, looking around at all of us, “Fuck, isn’t that what I just said?”

And we said, in a Kerry-led chorus, “FUCK, YES.”

Quite unaffected, Stoner Tom replied, “I hope you don’t want children, my dear. If you’re anything like me, the world would be better off if we didn’t reproduce.”

I don’t know what the woman’s reply was, because right at that moment we arrived home and the backdoors swung open to reveal a disconsolate Tasha sitting on our front steps, blood pouring from her nose. Perched beside her was our volunteer baby-sitter, Marita, who was stroking Tasha soothingly and trying to dab the poor dog’s nose with a bloody wad of tissue paper.

Before I could react, Roger hissed, “Shit, would you look at the window?”

He was pointing at our oversized living room window, which was missing, other than some jagged bits around the edges of the frame. The grass beneath the window was covered with glass. Obviously, Tasha had gone through the window.

Tasha whined when she saw us, tried to get up to come and greet us, but then staggered and sank back down.

“She’s bleeding all over the place,” Marita said. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Everybody sobered up, most notably Stoner Tom. He raced to his apartment, got his medic’s kit that he’d saved from Korean DMZ duty, and came running back to treat Tasha’s ripped up nose. She always liked Stoner Tom and sat there without complaint as he anesthetized her nose, stanched the bleeding, cleaned out the glass, sprinkled on a heavy layer of sulfa, then applied a butterfly bandage, while advising us to get to her a vet for stitches.

Carol was already on the phone and no one was open on New Year’s Eve, so Stoner Tom sighed, gave Tasha another shot, and did the stitches himself. Tasha whimpered some, but didn’t move under his touch. By now, Thom Mead had returned from a party of his own and sobered up enough to assist his former medic partner. Thom said that Stoner Tom was noted for the beauty of his handiwork and many an Army doctor had urged him to get his physician’s license and become a plastic surgeon.

While Carol and Marita checked on Jason in Marita’s upstairs bedroom, I quizzed a couple of neighbors who had emerged from their houses drunk, but concerned about Tasha.

“She was like fuckin’ super dog,” said one of the more coherent members of the group.

“Fuckin’ super dog,” echoed his companion.

“She was like barkin’, man,” the first guy continued, “But it weren’t one of her ordinary barks. She was like fuckin’ roaring, man. Like a tiger.”

“Fuckin’ tiger,” said his pal.

“Or, maybe a lion or a bear,” the first guy elaborated.

“Fuckin’ bear,” added his loyal friend.

“Then I heard this, you know, fuckin’ crash, man,” said the first guy. “It was like… like… shit, a fuckin’ big ass crash.”

“Fuckin’ big ass crash,” confirmed his buddy.

“Then I heard a fuckin’ scream, man. And I looked outside and I see this fuckin’ asshole tryin’ to get away on his bike, man, and like Tasha was fuckin’ rippin’ his leg all to fuckin’ pieces. There was fuckin’ blood everywhere.”

“Fuckin’ blood everywhere,” said his friend, throwing up his hands to demonstrate how widespread the gore was.

I looked at the sidewalk and street in front of our apartment and in the lamplight could see they were not exaggerating.

“By bike,” I said, “do you mean a motorcycle?” I was thinking of the Right Wing bikers. I wouldn’t put it past one of them trying to break into the place for any rent money I might’ve had on hand.

“Yeah, yeah, a fuckin’ Trumpet,” he said, meaning the British made Triumph.

“Fuckin’ Trumpet,” agreed his companion.

That eliminated any of the bikers as suspects. They all rode chopped Harleys and would rather die than be seen on a Limey “piece of Lucas Electrics shit.” Lucas Electrics ignition systems were notorious for failing at the slightest hint of moisture in the atmosphere. Something I’d always found odd, considering that Great Britain by no means possessed a desert climate.

“What’re you gonna fuckin’ do, man?” asked the neighbor. “Call the pigs are some fuckin’ shit like that?”

“Fuckin’ shit like that?”” queried his buddy.

I shook my head. “All I’ve got is a broken window and an injured dog. I can fix the window and her nose will heal. But if you see that Trumpet hanging around, let me know.”

“Fuckin’ A,” said my neighbor.

“Fuckin’ A,” agreed his friend.

And then they returned to their wine and whatever, leaving us none the wiser.

Venice always had a high burglary rate, but it had increased by leaps and bounds over the past few months, as had other crimes. Up in San Francisco meth had emptied out the Haight Ashbury communes. The shit had a way of turning normally peaceful, generous people into thieving paranoids. 

Soon as one member of a commune started snurfing meth, the others followed, transforming into Mr. and Ms. Hydes, lurking on one another, stealing hockable possessions and then hitting the streets to rob and even rape. Meth can give you a big fat hard-on and no compunctions about using it.

When the communes blew up and everybody fled, the first people to hit Venice were the good guys. The Peace, Love, Ten Dollar Dope crowd who believed in share and share alike. Greenpeace set up shop, as well a dozen other counter-culture charities. 

But a chill wind soon followed, blowing in the very same crooks and creeps who had bedeviled the Haight. Down at the Venice Boardwalk all was hippie joy and blissful smoke during the day. But when the sun started to go down you’d best be on your way, because the slime balls would come creeping out of the alleys, looking for opportunity – and even murder.

So, it didn’t surprise me that somebody tried to hit our place. After the bikers, my suspicions briefly fell on our resident junkies. But then, they were scared shitless of Tasha who had taken an immediate dislike to them. Maybe it was the heroin seeping from their pores. 

When Ginny – Carol’s college student sister – threw a party at our place a couple of her friends turned out to be smack freaks. In 1970 heroin was a nasty college fad that thankfully died out when students saw their previously much-admired rebel friends drooling in the gutter. Anyway, they shot up in our bathroom and Tasha freaked, practically ripping the door down when she smelled the shit. We had to lock her in a bedroom before we could safely throw the little bastards out.

Tasha had weird prejudices. For example, she didn’t like people in hats. She’d go nuts when the mailman came, but if he tucked his hat in his carrier she let him pass with nothing more than a low growl. She distrusted people who carried canes or sticks, and although she didn’t growl at old people with canes – recognizing that they weren’t real threats – she watched them suspiciously until they were out of sight. 

Bring a policeman to the door with a hat on his head and a truncheon in his belt and she’d go nuts, lunging and frothing at the mouth until I dragged her away and locked in her in the other room.

Good Tasha. Bark at that nasty policeman.

And, of course, she despised smack freaks and let them know her feelings in no uncertain terms.

So, if I were to draw up a profile of our would-be burglar I’d say he/she was probably a crippled heroin addict, who wore a hat and rode a British motorcycle that broke down whenever it rained.

I never encountered such a person, but I kept an eye out for them just in case.

Unfortunately, I had larger problems lurking just around the corner

NEXT: THE TRAVELING SALESMAN MATTER

*****

FREEDOM BIRD: THE SUMMER OF LOVE

During the Vietnam war, GIs who managed to survive their tour of duty were flown home in chartered airliners, which they called “Freedom Birds.” This is the story of three young men – from  wildly different backgrounds – who meet on such a plane and make a pact to spend three days together in San Francisco. Their goal: to spend every cent of  their mustering out money in a party of  a lifetime. And they’ll get more than they bargained for: because when they land, it is July 1967 – in a time that would come to be known as “The Summer Of Love.” A place and time where each young man will have to confront the ghosts who followed them home from the jungles of Vietnam and contemplate a future none of them had imagined. 

Click here for the paperback.

Click here for the Kindle version

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*****

ALL THREE STEN OMNIBUS EDITIONS NOW ON TAP

The entire 8-novel landmark science fiction series is now being presented in three three giant omnibus editions from Orbit Books.  The First - BATTLECRY - features the first three books in the series: Sten #1; Sten #2 -The Wolf Worlds; and Sten #3, The Court Of A Thousand Suns. Next: JUGGERNAUT, which features Sten #4, Fleet Of The Damned; Sten #5, Revenge Of The Damned; and Sten #6, The Return Of The Emperor. Finally, there's DEATHMATCH, which contains Sten #6, Vortex; and Sten #7, End Of Empire. Click on the highlighted titles to buy the books. Plus, if you are a resident of The United Kingdom, you can download Kindle versions of the Omnibus editions. Which is one clot of a deal!

Here's the Kindle link for BATTLECRY

Here's the Kindle link for JUGGERNAUT

Here's the Kindle link for DEATHMATCH

*****

HERE ARE ALL EIGHT AMERICAN EDITIONS OF STEN 

YOU CAN BUY THE TRADE PAPERBACKS, E-BOOKS AND AUDIO BOOKS BY CLICKING ON THE STEN PAGE!

*****
THE STEN COOKBOOK & KILGOUR JOKEBOOK

Two new companion editions to the international best-selling Sten series. In the first, learn the Emperor's most closely held  cooking secrets. In the other, Sten unleashes his shaggy-dog joke cracking sidekick, Alex Kilgour. Both available as trade paperbacks or in all major e-book flavors. Click here to tickle your funny bone or sizzle your palate.  

*****

IT'S A BOOK!

THE COMPLETE HOLLYWOOD MISADVENTURES! 

HERE'S WHERE YOU BUY IT

TRADE PAPERBACK.  

KINDLE. 

NOOK BOOK. 

ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.  

*****

TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE

Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969

In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with  a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is  "The Blue Meanie,"  a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself. Here's where to buy the book. 

*****

STEN #1 NOW IN SPANISH! 

Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four 

episodes. Part One and Part Two appeared in back-to-back issues. And now Part Three has hit the virtual book stands.  Stay tuned, for the grand conclusion. Meanwhile, here are the links to the first three parts. Remember, it's free!

Link To Part One 

Link To Part Two

Link To Part Three

A DOGGY THANKSGIVING

COMING SOON: 

THE BLUE MEANIE AUDIOBOOK

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*****

Okay, now for the promised Thanksgiving bash of 1969. And I do not exaggerate when I say bash.

Here’s some of what was happening in the world:

Not only had Armstrong landed on the moon – doing his giant step for mankind routine – but Astronauts Conrad and Bean had followed that up by doing moon walks a week before Thanksgiving. Talk about cool. Rumor had it that one of the astronauts had smoked a joint in his tube, but nobody was saying who.

Civil rights battles were still sizzling, with riots here and there and KKK assholes murdering people and the cops turning a blind eye. Same old, same old, right? Ted Kennedy fucked himself forever when he gave a woman who was not his wife a “ride home” and crashed his car into a lake, leaving her there for the fishes while he did everything in his power to evade the inevitable. It was the “splash and run” of the century.

Lots of other stuff was happening that I won’t go into, like the bombing of Hanoi, the My Lai Massacre and a whole host of other things, more bad than good. Despite that, or maybe because of it, from the point of view of the Pepperland collective, it was a good year to get behind us. And so we threw the bash of all bashes. Inviting everybody, but everybody. And yeah, I mean, even Mr. and Mrs. Mad Bomber.

It was pretty iffy at first – the party, I mean. We were all pretty broke. Moneyed people don’t realize how hard holidays can be on those without so much cash. For regular folks the rent is usually due a few days after Thanksgiving, which was of particular concern to us that year because we were in the middle of a recession. Well, okay, before we fired LBJ’s big Texas butt he was calling it a “minor downturn” and when Nixon took over, he said “the end is in sight,” then did a Bush number (both of them) and promptly drove the economy to its knees.

Even so, everybody did the best they could, pitching in with food, drink and snacks. We had a turkey, thanks to the Funk brothers, the skinflint publishers of the newspaper I worked for. Instead of giving out year-end bonuses, the penny-pinching Funks bought a truckload of frozen turkeys every year from some Mexican turkey ranches in Baja and handed them out to their employees. I learned for a fact that the turkeys cost them three cents a pound – including transportation – so it was a helluva deal for the Funks when we all stood about the truck as the guys from Ensenada tossed paper-wrapped carcasses at us.

The good news was that these were Mexican turkeys, fat as could be off of good field scraps, with not one blast of hormones in their turkey corpses. In other words, in the days before range free was the rage, these turkeys were range free delicious. The even better news was that my boss – Carl Fritche, the best newsman and beer drinker in Los Angeles – provided his turkey in return for an invitation. Carl had recently been thrown out of his house by his long-suffering wife who didn’t want to have anything to do with Carl’s goddamn turkey.

We also had a goose, thanks to Roger who had slipped down to the Venice Canals one night and wrung a bird’s neck. His new girlfriend – a twenty-something runaway from a Utah Mormon family – had not only plucked and cooked the goose, she went back to the canals with Jan the following night and scored enough goose and duck eggs to provide an army with enormous deviled eggs, egg-salad, homemade bread and biscuits, with plenty left over for eggnog, courtesy of generous helpings of brandy and rum from the Mad Bombers.

Nancy – Roger’s new squeeze - also organized the ice cream. She had lots of recipes from her Mormon grandmother, who ran a dairy farm in Utah. All the ice cream was homemade on a big old crank machine. The main ice cream engineer was her little kid, Brendon, who was hyper as hell in a time when Ritalin was only starting to creep its creepy way onto the market. Nancy’s method of dealing with his malady was better. She put the kid to work doing things he liked that took a lot of energy. Ice cream, for example. He could turn that crank like a son of a gun. You just had to have somebody come by once and awhile and encourage him. You jumped up and down like a monkey and shouted, “hoot, hoot, hoot,” while making cranking motions. And he’d reply, “hoot, hoot, hoot,” in absolute bliss and continue cranking. Brendon slept very well on ice cream nights. And, damn that was good ice cream. Ben and Jerry’s take note.

So, for Thanksgiving, we’d have an old-fashioned farmhouse-full of food being roasted, broiled and boiled, creamed and sautéed… thin string beans, pea pods, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, roasted sweet potatoes, cranberries, clams dug up on the shore, horseradish from Mrs. Wilson’s alley garden… salads and dressings galore and meanwhile the ice cream machine kept going and going, courtesy of Brendon.

And damn, I almost forgot to tell you – and this is the most important ingredient of all - for the turkeys I made this dressing; a stuffing to end all stuffing. A stuffing aimed at curing all that was wrong with the world past, present and far into the future.

Cole’s recipe for World Peace: Take five big fat handfuls of marijuana out of your three-kilo Korean stash. Sautee in lots of butter until the marijuana is good and brown and you get high just walking into the kitchen breathing the buttery marijuana fumes. Then you do your basic sage dressing, sans sage. After stuffing the birds I had a large pan left over, which I baked when the turkeys were done.

While we waited for the birds – we were using Marita’s oven for the overflow – we did some serious drinking and dope smoking. Besides beer we had five gallons of sangria, using a recipe I’d gotten from a Spanish restaurant I’d worked at during my days as a chef. Basically I soaked cut-up fruit in several gallons of cheap red wine in a five gallon pot that I’d scored from a bankrupt restaurant owner. To finish the sangria off, I added two pints of Christian Brothers brandy – again courtesy of the Mad Bombers – and a dash of club soda in each glass, to let the Good Lord think we were only foolin’, as my old Irish uncle used to say.

The sangria was a huge success - everybody applauded after the first swallow, although Stoner Tom allowed that maybe it could use a little percodan for enlightenment. The crowd laughed and shouted him down. However, I noted some eyebrows raised in interest. 

Carl Fritche, who only drank beer and never partook of dope, found Tom to be a boon companion. Like Tom, he spent most of his life looped. With Carl it was beer, or later when his doctor said he had a potassium problem – vodka and tomato juice. He once drank so much vodka and tomato juice that he turned orange. During working hours Carl kept himself straight by drinking quantities of very strong instant coffee (Taster’s Choice) and by sucking on a pipe so permeated by nicotine that it trickled down the back of his throat.

Carl and Tom talked about Existentialism that Thanksgiving Day and also how Carl could score a tank of oxygen from Tom’s hospital that he could install in his Volkswagen van and breathe himself sober so the cops wouldn’t bust him when he was beer bar hopping. They became great pals in later days, with Tom supplying Carl with medical oxygen and Carl visiting Tom in the hospital with care packages during Tom’s suicidal period.

*     *     *

Okay, so at this point I’m going to drive my editors nuts and pause the story to tell you about Carl’s beer bar hopping habits. I doubt that in my writer's lifetime I’ll have an opportunity to tell it in any other form, so I’m telling it now. It’s like this: One day my car broke down, plus Los Angeles was being battered with a rare deluge, so Carl volunteered to give me a ride home – a distance of about three miles.

The trip took us two-and-a-half hours, I kid thee not. It worked like this: instead of immediately shooting from Santa Monica to Venice, Carl said he had to stop and pee. He explained that he had a “busted pucker string from the war” and had to “piss a lot.” Carl was a former WWII fighter pilot, so I didn’t question his statement. Except, he drove in the opposite direction from my house, wending his way to a dive beer bar. When we walked in the door he told the bartender – who immediately recognized him – that he wanted four beers, meaning two for him and two me. He disappeared into the John, then emerged just as the bartender set the beers on the counter. He downed his two beers in quick order and I followed suit, not wanting to “let down the side,” you know.

This continued on for over two hours. Carl would drive for a little bit, suddenly declare that his “pucker string” was puckering, and stop at another dive beer bar. Each time he ordered four beers, swallowed his share in two quick motions, then motioned for me to follow him to his car. Damn, man. I drank more beer that night then ever in my life – including college beer busts. Anyway, not long after Stoner Tom got Carl the oxygen tanks I had to do the beer ride again. Carl would emerge from the beer bar, staggering a little. Climb into the car and put the mask over his face. He’d suck pure oxygen, then start the car and go on straight as an arrow.

He told me once that during his fighter pilot days he always flew drunk to start with - to get the nerve up to face the enemy. But then he’d suck on the oxygen and when the flack started to fly from the German anti-aircraft guns he said, “I’d sober up in a hurry.” He said it was good trick to know when you suffered war wounds like a “busted pucker string.”

Meanwhile, back to our fabulous Thanksgiving.

*     *     *

While the food was cooking, we turned the stereo way high, playing everything from the Stones to that jerk Rod McKuen, which Alita had brought because he was her current favorite. People tried to tell Alita that McKuen was gay and not writing his treacly poetry and music about women, but round-bottomed French and Italian waiters.

She didn’t care. “Let me shake my round bottom at him and he’ll forget boys forever,” she said.

Nobody quarreled with her. The women because they all had a soft spot for Mr. McKuen; the men because blonde Alita was just so drop-down gorgeous in her little hippie, mini-skirted, sheer-bloused outfit that they knew they’d be thrown out of every guy’s club on Earth. A Real Guy would never disrespect, or disagree, with a woman who looked like Alita.

The Mad Bomber shyly asked Alita if she had ever fired a black powder weapon and when she replied in the negative he blushed and stammered and asked if maybe she’d like him to show her one day.

Apparently Mrs. Mad Bomber thought this was tantamount to adultery. “You get near that bitch,” she stage-whispered, “and I swear to God I’ll shoot your nuts off.”

“Now, hon, I was only being neighborly,” the Mad Bomber said, stroking his wife to try to calm her down.

Alita wisely retreated to the other side of the room where Kerry and the other members of the jug band were arguing movie endings. They’d just seen “Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid,” along with “Midnight Cowboy,” in one of the Venice Fox Theater’s fabulous double bills.

“Everybody dies at the end, these days,” Clara was saying. “I hate that. Butch and Sundance get it in the first movie. Dustin Hoffman dies in ‘Cowboy’. Then Richard and I just saw ‘Easy Rider’, and Peter Fonda is shot by that dirty redneck right at the end. Blowing up that beautiful motorcycle, too. I thought I’d cry all night. He hadn’t even found Jesus, yet, and that is what Captain America was looking so hard for.”

People were puzzled. “You think Peter Fonda was looking for Jesus in ‘Easy Rider’?” Tim asked from his wheelchair.

Curious, I plumped down in a fold-out chair beside him, waiting for Clara’s reply.

She rolled her eyes like we were all very strange, very alien beings. “Who else was he looking for, silly?” she said. “He does this evil cocaine deal at the beginning of the movie and then he has to like, make amends for this awful sin. So he goes off to find salvation. He thinks he finds it in the graveyard in New Orleans, but he’s there taking drugs and he’s with wicked women, so the devil still has him.” 

She looked at Tim. “It’s the same with Butch and Sundance. And with Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. They’re all looking for Jesus. But the guys who make movies these days won’t let them find Him. So they not only cheat the audience with a sad ending, but they cheat us out of finding Jesus as well.” She looked at Tim and said, “See what I mean?”

Tim was so bemused by her answer that he almost shook his head yes, but at the last minute he shook it the other way. He asked the bottom line question. “Clara, when I took LSD and fell off the roof of that hotel, do you think I was looking for Jesus?”

For some reason Clara thought this was funny. She giggled. Mind you, Jesus freak though she might be, she was wearing skin tight jeans, and a semi-sheer, rose-colored cotton tie-around dealie that offered up her soft breasts in a marvelous, quite artful, display. It was a display not lost on any of us males, but especially her true love, Richard, who broke off playing his guitar along with Keith Richards on the stereo to listen to her wonderful, saintly giggle, and watch her pretty tits jiggling innocently beneath the thin cotton vest.

Richard cleared his throat, cutting off Clara’s reply. “Honey,” he said, “maybe we ought to go check on those rolls in the oven.”

Clara raised an eyebrow, “But we don’t…” She broke off when she saw the husbandly lust in his eyes and did another one of those delightful giggles. “Sure, baby. They’re probably about ready. Better hurry before they burn.” And they both headed out for their apartment, Clara blushing furiously as she called, “Back in a sec.”

From the look on Richard’s face we knew they’d be a little longer than Clara’s “sec.”

“I need to find a girl pretty quick,” Kerry said. “The way the two of them go at it, they’re driving me crazy.”

Tim barked that crazy laugh of his. “I can’t even get a hard on anymore,” he said, “and they’re driving me crazy too."

Soon it was time for dinner and we all made pigs of ourselves – doing our best to hold up the American Thanksgiving tradition for the ages. The dope dressing had the effect of not only getting us blissfully stoned, but of making us even hungrier so we just kept eating until we were ready to burst.

In the middle of all this, the minister of the local Episcopal church dropped by – I’d befriended him while doing a profile for my column – and although we warned him about the turkey dressing he said he was feeling experimental and dug in. Soon he was laughing and making church jokes. I still remember one of them. It went like this:

Everybody was in church one fine Sunday morning when suddenly there was a crash of lightning and Satan appeared. People screamed in terror and, led by the minister, fled the church.

One old man, however, remained calmly seated in his pew.

A surprised Satan stalked over to the old man. “Do you know who I am?” he thundered.

Nonplused, the old man merely nodded. “Yep," he said.

"And you're not afraid?”

“Nope," the old man said.

“You know I could kill you with a word?” the Devil said.

“Sure do,” the old man replied.

“Or, worse, do you know I could cause you profound, horrifying physical and mental agony for all eternity?"

"Don't doubt it," the old man said.

"And you're still not afraid?" asked the exasperated Father Of Evil.

"Not a bit," the old man said.

"Well, why aren't you afraid of me?" the Devil asked.

The old man shrugged and replied: "Been married to your sister nigh onto fifty years."

About then, Country Joe and the boys arrived, bringing along Tom Ghent, a country singer/songwriter friend. (Tom was going with one of the girls in the Blue Meanie apartments.) They started jamming, with Richard playing Carol’s upright piano honky-tonk style and soon our food lethargy was gone as we all sang and danced to the music, or – like the minister - just laid back on pillows and grinned crazily at the scene.

During a lull, Roger tottered into the kitchen to fetch more Sangria, then returned with a look of vast amusement on his face. “Oh, Al-lan,” he called, in a sing song voice that I knew spelled nothing but trouble. “Didn’t you say you made some extra stuffing?”

My heart jumped. “Oh, shit,” I said, knowing exactly what had happened.

I dashed past Roger into the kitchen, skidding through a buttery pool. The tray I’d cooked the extra dope stuffing in sat empty on the tiles, licked bright and sparkling clean by Tasha, who was sprawled on the floor with a big doggy grin on her face. She was clearly ripped to the tits.

“Oh, shit,” I said again. I wanted to get mad, but that silly grin just got to me – especially with all that dope inside me - and I started laughing. “Shit, shit, shit,” I said.

Everybody else trooped in, reviewed the scene, got a look at Tasha and joined in the laughter. We were all so stoned that it made the whole thing even funnier.

Eventually, I started worrying about the effects of so much marijuana on Tasha’s system. But a new tenant in my building, a PhD candidate in biology at UCLA, assured me that she’d be just fine, but that the stone-over might last quite awhile.

He was an expert on the subject – overseeing a marijuana study for his professor. Basically he pumped mice full of pure THC – the active ingredient of cannabis - then removed and homogenized their brains in a big cyclotron, or whatever, so they could study the effects of pot juice on the brain cells, if any. He said the only thing bad that happened to the mice was having their brains removed. Meanwhile, they’d been blissfully getting stoned, eating mouse food and getting laid a lot.

I asked him, “Did it make them want to fuck more?” Roger, who was standing beside me, perked up at my question. He was curious too.

Our biologist friend shrugged. “Who can tell?” he said. “A male mouse screws twenty times a day if he can, with or without cannabis.”

“Jesus H. Christ,” Roger said, with much awe. “I’ll never think about a mouse the same way.”

True to our biologist friend’s word, Tasha was stoned for more than a week. She slept a lot and dreamed a lot, always seeming to be joyously chasing something. She’d yip with glee in her sleep, legs going like mad. Sometimes she’d bark herself awake, then her head would pop up. She’d glaze around the room, then look at us and that silly doggy grin would crease her jaw. Finally, she’d give a big, dramatic sigh and go back to sleep.

At night, Tasha always bedded down upstairs – insisting that she sleep in front of Jason’s bedroom door so she could guard him. But stoned, the stairs gave her difficulty. She’d get her front legs to climb up a few steps, but then she couldn’t seem to make her hindquarters follow. 

She’d reach with first one hind leg, then another, then she’d give up – her full length stretched out across the stairs. And she’d sigh that deep, deep doggy sigh.

I’d come up behind her and she’d look back, grinning a crazy grin, then deliver another sigh. I’d give her hindquarters a boost, which would get her front legs going again until they went as far as she could reach and the back legs would refuse to follow until I helped.

Finally, after many boosts, she’d sprawl out in front of Jason’s door, sigh again, and fall back into dreams of chasing things. She couldn’t get down the stairs the same way and I had to carry her – she was over eighty pounds and when stoned was an uneasy burden. After I got her downstairs in the morning, I’d take her outside so she could do her business.

Now, Tasha was quite the lady. When my brother or I took her out for a constitutional we’d have to turn our backs before she’d go. I mean, she’d find the perfect spot for a nice pee, stake it out, walk around it, then whine and glare at us until we turned around. Only then would she do the deed. And she scratched dirt over the spot like a cat, then walked away, head and tail high, as if nothing untoward had happened.

However, for an entire week Tasha was so ripped that every time she squatted she lost her balance and fell over. The only thing to be done was for me to brace her, holding her upright while she peed. Even then, she wouldn't go, but would glare accusingly until I turned my head – looking well away, maybe even whistling to show I wasn’t paying attention. Then she’d pee.

Poor baby.

During this time, she wouldn’t relieve herself when my brother took her out, but would hold it in all day until I got home from work, then she’d pee veritable rivers. I didn’t dare stop for a beer with the boys, but had to rush home to rescue Tasha. Love takes weird twists, you know?

Tasha was okay by the Yuletide, but this time when I made the dope stuffing for the turkey I made certain to put the extra pan on top of the refrigerator – way out of her reach. Even so, she drove us nuts jumping trying to get at it, so I put her outside until dinner was over.

Thanksgiving in Venice.

Yeah.

NEXT: NEW YEAR'S WITH SANTANA

*****

FREEDOM BIRD: THE SUMMER OF LOVE

During the Vietnam war, GIs who managed to survive their tour of duty were flown home in chartered airliners, which they called “Freedom Birds.” This is the story of three young men – from  wildly different backgrounds – who meet on such a plane and make a pact to spend three days together in San Francisco. Their goal: to spend every cent of  their mustering out money in a party of  a lifetime. And they’ll get more than they bargained for: because when they land, it is July 1967 – in a time that would come to be known as “The Summer Of Love.” A place and time where each young man will have to confront the ghosts who followed them home from the jungles of Vietnam and contemplate a future none of them had imagined. 

Click here for the paperback.

Click here for the Kindle version

Click here for the Nook Book version

Click here for all e-book flavors

*****

ALL THREE STEN OMNIBUS EDITIONS NOW ON TAP

The entire 8-novel landmark science fiction series is now being presented in three three giant omnibus editions from Orbit Books.  The First - BATTLECRY - features the first three books in the series: Sten #1; Sten #2 -The Wolf Worlds; and Sten #3, The Court Of A Thousand Suns. Next: JUGGERNAUT, which features Sten #4, Fleet Of The Damned; Sten #5, Revenge Of The Damned; and Sten #6, The Return Of The Emperor. Finally, there's DEATHMATCH, which contains Sten #6, Vortex; and Sten #7, End Of Empire. Click on the highlighted titles to buy the books. Plus, if you are a resident of The United Kingdom, you can download Kindle versions of the Omnibus editions. Which is one clot of a deal!

Here's the Kindle link for BATTLECRY

Here's the Kindle link for JUGGERNAUT

Here's the Kindle link for DEATHMATCH

*****

HERE ARE ALL EIGHT AMERICAN EDITIONS OF STEN 

YOU CAN BUY THE TRADE PAPERBACKS, E-BOOKS AND AUDIO BOOKS BY CLICKING ON THE STEN PAGE!

*****
THE STEN COOKBOOK & KILGOUR JOKEBOOK

Two new companion editions to the international best-selling Sten series. In the first, learn the Emperor's most closely held  cooking secrets. In the other, Sten unleashes his shaggy-dog joke cracking sidekick, Alex Kilgour. Both available as trade paperbacks or in all major e-book flavors. Click here to tickle your funny bone or sizzle your palate.  

*****

IT'S A BOOK!

THE COMPLETE HOLLYWOOD MISADVENTURES! 

HERE'S WHERE YOU BUY IT

TRADE PAPERBACK.  

KINDLE. 

NOOK BOOK. 

ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.  

*****

TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE

Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969

In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with  a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is  "The Blue Meanie,"  a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself. Here's where to buy the book. 

*****

STEN #1 NOW IN SPANISH! 

Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four 

episodes. Part One and Part Two appeared in back-to-back issues. And now Part Three has hit the virtual book stands.  Stay tuned, for the grand conclusion. Meanwhile, here are the links to the first three parts. Remember, it's free!

Link To Part One 

Link To Part Two

Link To Part Three

MRS. MAD BOMBER'S LAMENT

LATE TO THE BLUE MEANIE PARTY? CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP

*****

The first time I met him face-to-face it was a cold – for California – early November night. The Mad Bomber had fallen woefully behind in his rent and it was up to me to either collect, or move him gently on his way without endangering the surrounding neighborhood - or Mr. Cohen’s insurance premiums.

The Mad Bomber was three weeks overdue, which wasn’t an emergency, but I knew if it got to be two months that he owed, I’d have less of a chance of collecting and then he might sit there forever like the Blue Meanie and Mr. Cohen would rightfully fire my ass.

Obviously, I had to handle the situation with extreme delicacy. The thing is, meth freaks have a tendency to blow and in this case the explosion could be a disaster for everyone. 

I got a few friends to keep an eye out for Mr. and Mrs. Mad Bomber. I wanted to catch them the moment they came home from some errand – preferably before they had a chance to get ripped on methadrine. I’d made some attempts a couple of nights before, but once they were ensconced in their little world of gunpowder and speed, it was impossible to get them to answer the door.

Mind you, my preference would be to just get them to frigging move – I wanted no explosive materials anywhere around me. Sure, I could call the cops. But you met Captain Emory, right? Do you think it would be safe to invite Emory to lead a squad of LAPD’s not so finest to the Mad Bomber’s door? What do you think would happen?

Yeah, that was my opinion too.

So, getting a tip from Jan that they were home, I shrugged on a coat against the biting wind coming off the Pacific and trudged over to the Mad Bomber’s apartment.

I recall that Thanksgiving wasn’t far off and to my mind there is nothing like a California beach Thanksgiving. The salty air was crisp and I could hear the waves breaking on the not-so-distant shore. 

Although everyone’s windows were closed to the cold, when you approached the Blue Meanie apartments you could hear music coming from everywhere in the complex.

The windows themselves seemed to act as speakers and as I walked along the alley I could hear everything from the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, to Elvis and Fats Domino and Janis Joplin. And beneath it all I cold hear Kerry and the jug band going through their paces. On the second floor I saw shadows prancing behind the curtains to an infectious percussive beat and I paused to enjoy Jan and Alita trying out a new routine for their topless act. 

I don’t know if they were topless or not – the curtains were pretty thick - but my imagination made them so.

Finally I came to the Mad Bomber’s apartment. The front light was on and to my surprise, I saw a Christmas wreath hanging from the door. An even bigger surprise – I could hear Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” inside. 

Although Christmas was more than a month away, maybe this was a good omen. How bad could things really be if the Mad Bomber family thought it was Christmas? 

I knocked and a few seconds later the door creaked open and the smell of marijuana and booze poured out. And I found the Mad Bomber peering at me through red eyes.

When he saw me, a huge smile lit his unkempt beard. “Merry Christmas,” he boomed. I said Merry Christmas back, wisely ignoring the fact that that we were still working our way up to Thanksgiving. 

He turned his head and shouted, “Look who’s here, honey.”

He clapped me on the shoulder. “Come on in and have a little Christmas cheer,” he said. But as I stepped inside he looked at me again – doing sort of a double take.

“Who the fuck are you?” he said, but not in an unfriendly manner. Then he snorted. “Fuck it, whoever you are. Siddown and have a fuckin’ drink.”

I saddown. I drank from the pint of Christian Brothers brandy that he offered. Christian Brothers was not my brandy of choice – unless it was either cut with a lot of ginger ale, or if there was nothing else at hand to keep away the foggy, foggy dew. 

I took an extra swallow to gather my faculties and proceeded to explain my mission.

The Mad Bomber scowled at me. “You’re the rent guy, huh?” I admitted I was. He turned to address the closed bedroom door. “Honey, it’s the rent guy.”

I heard a female voice reply, “Just a sec, babe.”

The Mad Bomber rose to his feet. He handed me the pint of brandy. “Keep it,” he said. “I got another.” He patted his back pocket, where there was a definite pint-sized bulge.

Then he lifted a thick, black pea coat off the back of chair. “My wife takes care of all the business, pal. She’ll be right out.” He shrugged the jacket on. “Me, I’m gonna take a walk to the beach and back.” He looked ostentatiously at his watch. “Take me an hour – at least.”

Had he underscored the “at least?” It seemed to me he had. But before I could comment the Mad Bomber was out the door. I looked around the room, confused. It was a small apartment, as I mentioned before, with a large kitchen. 

This Mr. and Mrs. MB had screened off with a curtain of what I now realized were brass cartridge cases all strung together with I later found out was some pretty high test fishing line.

The Guns And Ammo theme was carried through the living room, which was jammed with furniture, all of which had some kind of hunting or fishing or gun motif. Stuff right off the pages of the Shotgun News catalogue. 

There was a scrawny Christmas tree in one corner, traditional lights blazing and decorated with shell boxes painted different colors, old cleaning rods hanging from fishing line, little spray painted reaming brushes, and dozens of what appeared to be painted electronic parts that turned out to be timing fuses and other explosives paraphernalia. 

The tree was topped with a plastic human skull (I hoped it was plastic) painted a shiny silver.

Said tree was framed by two walls racked with guns of every variety. Pistols, rifles, shotguns, you name it. Edged weapons from different armies of various eras were scattered here and there..

As I took this in – as well as another hefty slug of Christian Brothers – the record changer clicked and I heard Bing Crosby sing in oh, so mellifluous tones: “Do you see what I see?” And the white girl soprano chorus echoed, “Do you see what I see?”

It was all very bizarre. And it became even more so when the bedroom door opened and Mrs. Mad Bomber made her - ahem - Entrance.

She posed in the doorway, one hand stretched overhead – like a sexy cover model, one bare leg and foot stuck through the opening of her filmy robe. She wore a sheer, shorty nightie outfit underneath.

As I looked in shock at the hairy armpit, the stubbled legs, the dirty robe and the rest of her – a memory I don’t choose to dwell upon – I recalled Mr. Mad Bomber’s last words: “My wife takes care of all the business, pal… She’ll be right out… Me, I’m gonna take a walk to the beach and back… Take an hour – at least.”

To put it crassly, I think I was supposed to fuck Mrs. Mad Bomber in lieu of rent.

As if cued by my ponderings, Mrs. Mad Bomber ankled the rest of the way into the room, staggering a little after the second step. “Oh, where, oh where did I put that dratted checkbook,” she said in a manner and accent reminiscent of a trailer-trash version of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With The Wind.”

She sort of weaved toward me, pointed her butt at the place next to me on the couch, then collapsed  – feet coming up, legs splayed into an unflattering view of her gynecological parts. 

Believe me, if Mrs. Mad Bomber had been the prime example of the Mother Goddess’ miraculous work, there would be no Playboy, no Penthouse, no nada. Well, except maybe with methadrine Mr. Mad Bomber saw something in his true love that I didn’t see. If so, this was the most powerful argument against the drug that I’d ever encountered.

Mrs. Mad Bomber giggled a parody of a feminine giggle and straightened herself up and flashed me this big, big leering smile. Except, the poor thing had been doing speed for so long that her front teeth were a grand display of rotten gray and brown. Sort of like the abandoned store fronts in a ghost town I’d recently passed through in the California desert. Her husband, I’d noted when we’d met, was no better off. 

I estimate that between the two of them they had ten usable teeth – tops.

She said, quite coyly, actually, “You want, we can go into the bedroom where he keeps the gun powder and shit. Put some of the stuff on your dick that’ll blow us both up.”

And she slapped a hairy thigh and laughed uproariously. I was thinking of my pretty Irish wife at home – just a few hundred feet or so away – so blond and creamy white and so clean, clean, clean. 

So what if she was presently whacked on codeine to treat a migraine headache? I’d sit by her side and hold her hand and bathe her temples with cooling, eau-de-cologne. This was a burden I’d much rather bear.

I took another look at Mrs. MB, who once again graced me with her rotten smile. Praise the Lord and definitely do not pass the ammunition. How the hell was I going to get out of here?

“About the rent,” I said, launching into an aimless babble, in hopes that something would eventually come to me. “I’d really rather not take a check. Especially if you guys are sort of short and there’s a chance the check might bounce… It could make trouble for you… Real trouble.”

Flinging her legs aside, none too gracefully to say the least, she said, “Well, me and my husband are big believers in the barter economy. I mean, does it have to be a check, or… you know… cash… or could it be… you know… services… provided…?”

At this point she actually licked her lips over those blown out teeth, believing to the heart of her that she was irresistible. She stared directly at my crotch, which, I am not ashamed to admit, was as limp as a bait worm at a shark-fishing party.

Except, damn it, I was raised to be a gentleman. Who was I to demean a willing woman? Who was I to destroy that woman’s self-image of her beautiful self? Who was I, to say “no.”

“No thank you,” I said as politely as I could. “We have a handyman, a painter, a plumber and there really aren’t any other services that we require to keep the apartments ship shape. But thank you and your husband for offering, just the same. It’s really very generous and thoughtful of you…

“Now, about the rent…”

Okay, what I’d love to say is at that moment the front door banged open and Mr. Mad Bomber stalked into the apartment demanding what the fuck was going on here – expecting to catch me and his wife in-flagrante-delicto. It would be a lovely dramatic device. Oh, if only it could be so, it’d be better than fiction.

Well, as it happens, that is exactly what occurred next. Or almost occurred, at any rate.

After delivering my remarks to Mrs. Mad Bomber, I rewarded my shaky nerves by taking a big honk off the pint of brandy. Mrs. Mad Bomber was staring at me in disbelief, not knowing whether I didn’t I get it, or maybe I did and was rejecting her. 

She waved her raggedy robe back and forth – to reveal, or not to reveal – that was Mrs. Bomber’s question. I took another honk, praying to the Gods of guys who find themselves in this sort of shit through no fault of their own, that I would not be forced to take one more look at a naked part of her, thereby turning me off to women forever.

And then – thank you, Jesus - the door burst open and in stormed Mr. Mad Bomber. “What’s going on here?” he roared.

But he got no further than that. In fact, whatever else he had to say stuck in his throat as he took in the perfectly innocent tableaux consisting of a fully clothed me sitting as far away from his be-robed wife as was humanly possible on a six foot couch.

I jumped to my feet. “I was just explaining to your wife,” I babbled, “that I’d really prefer cash to a check. Because if it should bounce, Mr. Cohen is the kind of guy who will call the cops. Ticks me off when he does stuff like that, but he’s the boss.”

Mr. Mad Bomber looked at me with absolute amazement. He almost seemed ready to cry. “What cash?” he said – and it was almost a whine. “I thought there was gonna be a deal… an arrangement.”

I nodded vigorously. “I can do that,” I said. “Give me enough cash to cover this month’s rent and next month’s as well and I promise there won’t be a late fee. Also, if you do that, and there’s ever a problem in the future, I can plead your case better with Mr. Cohen.”

Mad Bomber only stared at me, not knowing what to say. But his wife was not so tongue-tied. “Give him the fucking money,” she said.

“What?” Mr. Mad Bomber said, his voice almost a whine.

“Oh, fuck it,” said Mrs. Mad Bomber.

She got up off the couch, drawing the robe primly about her, and stalked into the kitchen. She rustled around in the freezer and them came out with an ice cream container and flung it at me.

I opened the container. There was money inside. A lot of money.

“Count it out it yourself,” Mrs. Mad Bomber said. “And don’t forget to leave a fucking receipt.”

A few minutes later I stumbled out of their apartment clutching money in one hand and my balls in the other, thanking God in his merciful heaven for allowing me to escape with them intact.

And I didn’t forget to leave a fucking receipt. A non-fucking receipt, in this case.

  

NEXT: A DOGGY THANKSGIVING

*****

FREEDOM BIRD: THE SUMMER OF LOVE

During the Vietnam war, GIs who managed to survive their tour of duty were flown home in chartered airliners, which they called “Freedom Birds.” This is the story of three young men – from  wildly different backgrounds – who meet on such a plane and make a pact to spend three days together in San Francisco. Their goal: to spend every cent of  their mustering out money in a party of  a lifetime. And they’ll get more than they bargained for: because when they land, it is July 1967 – in a time that would come to be known as “The Summer Of Love.” A place and time where each young man will have to confront the ghosts who followed them home from the jungles of Vietnam and contemplate a future none of them had imagined. 

Click here for the paperback.

Click here for the Kindle version

Click here for the Nook Book version

Click here for all e-book flavors

*****

ALL THREE STEN OMNIBUS EDITIONS NOW ON TAP

The entire 8-novel landmark science fiction series is now being presented in three three giant omnibus editions from Orbit Books.  The First - BATTLECRY - features the first three books in the series: Sten #1; Sten #2 -The Wolf Worlds; and Sten #3, The Court Of A Thousand Suns. Next: JUGGERNAUT, which features Sten #4, Fleet Of The Damned; Sten #5, Revenge Of The Damned; and Sten #6, The Return Of The Emperor. Finally, there's DEATHMATCH, which contains Sten #6, Vortex; and Sten #7, End Of Empire. Click on the highlighted titles to buy the books. Plus, if you are a resident of The United Kingdom, you can download Kindle versions of the Omnibus editions. Which is one clot of a deal!

Here's the Kindle link for BATTLECRY

Here's the Kindle link for JUGGERNAUT

Here's the Kindle link for DEATHMATCH

*****

HERE ARE ALL EIGHT AMERICAN EDITIONS OF STEN 

YOU CAN BUY THE TRADE PAPERBACKS, E-BOOKS AND AUDIO BOOKS BY CLICKING ON THE STEN PAGE!

*****
THE STEN COOKBOOK & KILGOUR JOKEBOOK

Two new companion editions to the international best-selling Sten series. In the first, learn the Emperor's most closely held  cooking secrets. In the other, Sten unleashes his shaggy-dog joke cracking sidekick, Alex Kilgour. Both available as trade paperbacks or in all major e-book flavors. Click here to tickle your funny bone or sizzle your palate.  

*****

IT'S A BOOK!

THE COMPLETE HOLLYWOOD MISADVENTURES! 

HERE'S WHERE YOU BUY IT

TRADE PAPERBACK.  

KINDLE. 

NOOK BOOK. 

ALL E-BOOK FLAVORS.  

*****

TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE

Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969

In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with  a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is  "The Blue Meanie,"  a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself. Here's where to buy the book. 

*****

STEN #1 NOW IN SPANISH! 

Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four 

episodes. Part One and Part Two appeared in back-to-back issues. And now Part Three has hit the virtual book stands.  Stay tuned, for the grand conclusion. Meanwhile, here are the links to the first three parts. Remember, it's free!

Link To Part One 

Link To Part Two

Link To Part Three