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*****
Mrs. Mad Bomber was nearing her release date and her husband, who
was feeling increasingly guilty about his affair with the Upstairs Junkie’s
Girlfriend, wanted to do something special for his wife’s return.
He put it to Roger
like this, “If I don’t figure something out quick, she’s gonna shoot my nuts
off.”
Roger wasn’t ready to
test his bomb shelter just yet, so with visions of flying bullets castrating
him instead of the Mad Bomber, Roger convened an emergency guys' meeting, which
included himself, Jack Lishman and the Mad Bomber. I was considered management,
so I wasn’t invited.
After consuming a
great deal of smoke and Christian Brothers – courtesy of their host – their
minds started to wander off onto unhelpful tracks, like what the hell did women
want, anyway?
“I didn’t mean to
fuck that chick,” the Mad Bomber said. “She kept comin’ on to me, you know?”
“Saw her knocking on
your door nearly every day,” Roger agreed.
“This would be
easier,” Jack observed, “if there had only been a one-time occurrence. I mean,
the two of you were going at it pretty regularly, from what I could see.”
The Mad Bomber
sighed. “She always got me right after I’d done my wake up,” he said. “First
toot of the morning and I’m hornier than hell.”
“I can understand
that,” Jack said.
“Pass the joint,”
said Roger.
They kicked around
more ideas, sharing the joint and the brandy until it seemed that they would fog out before a solution had been found.
But then Roger
slapped his forehead and said, “Fuck, I forgot to tell you guys. I know how to
put a light bulb into a balloon.”
The Mad Bomber
goggled at him, then said, “No shit?”
“Hell yeah,” Roger
said. “I worked on it for weeks. For a long time I kept ripping the balloon,
or busting the bulb, but I finally got the hang of it.”
“Show us,” Jack
urged.
Roger adjourned to
his house and returned a few minutes later with some lightbulbs and a bag of
balloons. Everyone watched with great anticipation as Roger sat on the floor
crosslegged, then armed himself with a long honk of brandy and a hefty toke of
the evil weed.
The he fished out a
balloon and commenced to stretching it this way and that. He was very careful
with these exercises, stretching just a little at first, then harder as the
rubber loosened up. Then he blew the balloon up – almost to the bursting point.
He let out the air and did it again a few more times until he was satisfied the
balloon was primed.
Now it was time to
insert the lightbulb. Jack and the Mad Bomber bent close, but Roger gave them a
warning look. Like, please, this is a trade secret.
He turned to the side
to hide what he was doing, made some twisting motions, accompanied by squeaking
sounds like you get when a magician makes balloon animals for the kids, then he
put the balloon to his lips and huffed and puffed.
Finally, he turned
back, tied the neck of the balloon and held it up. Sure enough, the light bulb
was rattling around inside.
“Fuck me,” the Mad
Bomber said.
“Ditto,” agreed Jack.
The Mad Bomber’s grin
faded and he frowned. “Then what?” he asked.
Roger sighed. “Beats
the shit out of me,” he said. “But, I thought… you know…” and his grand idea
hovered on the edge of disaster.
More smoke and
spirits were consumed as the great men continued their council of war.
Eventually, when all seemed lost, Jack’s face lit up with a smile.
“What if we…” and he
leaned forward and explained his plan.
“Goddamn, but that’s
good,” the Mad Bomber said.
“Holy shit,” said
Roger.
It was the
breakthrough they needed.
“Fuck,” Roger said.
“And after that we could…”
Then the Mad Bomber
had the most brilliant idea of all and when he told them, awe was definitely
struck. More inducements were consumed in celebration, until soon the pungent
smoke wafting through the open windows drew other celebrants and the party got bigger.
But before they got totally whacked out, Roger drew the Mad Bomber and Jack aside.
“We have to promise
not to forget,” he told them.
And this they
solemnly swore.
* * *
While the gang worked on the problem of doing something nice for
Mrs. Mad Bomber so as to avoid getting her True Love's nuts shot off, I was trying to
deal with trouble from the least expected quarter: the woman who had replaced
Pepperland’s resident artist.
Our beautiful
bisexual artist had moved in with her professor shortly after completing her
master’s project – a life-sized lion carved out of scraps of different kinds of
wood that had been glued together. It was a marvelous creation and later sold
for over three thousand dollars when she had her first one-woman show in
Westwood. Her professor specialized in enormous tin doghouses, which he usually
painted red and sold for twenty or thirty thousand a go, so it was an affair
made in pop art heaven. Although, I must say, her lion was a helluva lot cooler
than his dog houses. I’ve often wondered what happened to her. Surely, lions
beat doghouses any day of the week.
The tenant who
followed became known to us as the “Cat Lady.” Not because of the lion – which,
as I said, had been sold – and not because she looked like Batman’s slinky
nemesis. (She was good to gaze upon, but she was more round than slinky.) The
nickname came from the numerous cats who eventually took up residence in her
apartment.
When she rented the
place she’d asked about her two cats, which weren’t a problem. Within reason,
Mr. Cohen allowed pets – witness my Tasha. What she didn’t tell us was that she
owned a whole colony of felines, which she kept temporarily stashed with her
mother. After she moved in, she slipped the kitty cats into her apartment
little by little.
Eventually, the odor
of too many cats and less than vigilant housekeeping alerted her neighbors: Marita on one side and Tom and Thom on
the other. Now, Marita could smell dirt a mile away, but when she was ripped on
bennies and beer – and in the middle of one of her cleaning jags – she just scrubbed
all the harder; assuming, she said later, that the odor was left behind by her
alcoholic husband during one of his rare conjugal visits. (When in his cups, he sometimes
confused closets with toilets).
Stoner Tom had
limited schnoz abilities due to, well, being constantly stoned. Thom Mead, on
the other hand, had a perfectly good smeller and caught on right away. But he
had designs on the Cat Lady’s virtue and kept his observations to himself until
a poet by the name of Steve Lenzi (introduced in The Biker And The Poet) beat his time and then the green monster
reared its creepy little head, turning Thom into fink.
On or about the time
the sages of the Blue Meanie Apartments were concocting their scheme, Thom came
knocking on my door.
When I answered he
blurted, “I thought you knew what was going on around here.”
I’d been about to
invite him in to share some wine and a bowl, but his tone was so challenging I
changed my mind. “Apparently not,” I said. “But you’re going to enlighten me,
right?”
“It’s that chick next
door to me,” he said. “She’s got cats.”
I nodded. “Yeah? So?”
“No, I mean she
really has cats,” he said, throwing his arms wide. “Like maybe twenty or thirty
of the suckers. You can smell them in our apartment.”
“No shit,” I said,
getting a little worried.
I wasn’t a lot
worried, because Thom tended to be an alarmist. It went with his hypochondria.
Ever since I’d known him – we met in our senior year in high school – he’d been
convinced that he was going to die any minute. I told him then that eventually
he’d be right, so why worry? It didn’t make him feel any better. In fact, in
recent times he’d become considerably worse. After a tour of duty in Korea as
an Army medic he was now afflicted with whole volumes or rare and wonderful
illnesses to dread.
Thom said, “Cats
carry diseases, you know. Diseases that humans can get. Especially when there
are so many.” He cupped a hand over his mouth and coughed experimentally. “As a
matter of fact, I think I’m coming down with something.”
Oh, oh, I thought.
Lawsuit city here we come. Thom could be a tight-fisted little stinker. The
kind of guy who kept his money in one of those tiny squeeze ‘em change purses,
so when you were both buying a couple of beers, or whatever, he’d be fumbling
with that squeeze ‘em thing for two small forevers, which meant that ninety
nine times out of a hundred his buddies got stuck with the whole bill. No big
deal. What’s a couple of beers? But when it gets to be every time it becomes sort
of tiresome, you know?
Anyway, Thom was
always looking for ways to skin a flint so I knew I had to do some serious bud
nipping just as fast as I could.
“You didn’t just find
this out, did you,” I said, making it a statement, not a question.
Thom looked shocked –
Shocked! “What are you implying?”
“Everybody knows
you’re hot for that chick,” I said. “You’ve been knocking on her door
practically every night. With twenty or thirty cats, you must have noticed
something was up when she was making excuses about washing her hair and shit.”
“Okay, okay, don’t
get nit picky, Al,” Thom said. “I’m just being a good tenant, you know?
Reporting a problem that I recently became aware of. But now you’ve got to do
something, right? I mean, so many cats in one apartment isn’t healthy.”
I sighed. This was
Thom’s not-so-subtle way of letting me know that he could call the Los Angeles
Health Department. As a newsman he could go straight to the top to make his
complaint.
“Don’t worry, Thom,”
I said. “I’ll take care of it.”
Immediately his
attitude changed and he was back to being an old high school chum again. He
looked over my shoulder to see if he could spot Carol, who had also been a
classmate. I shifted, blocking his view.
“See you later,
Thom,” I said. “I’ve got the early shift at the paper tomorrow.” And I firmly,
but politely, shut the door.
Carol saw my gloomy
look when I returned to the couch. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Apparently we have a
cat lady,” I said.
“A what?”
“Thom says the new
chick has twenty or thirty cats,” I explained.
“That explains
Steven’s new poem,” she said. “It’s called, ‘Le Chats.’”
“Is it any good?” I
asked.
Carol shrugged and
said, “Who knows? It’s in French.”
* * *
While Thom was fretting about cat piss, the sages of the Blue
Meanie Apartments had sobered up enough to complete their preparations.
Mr. Mad Bomber drove
out to pick his wife up at the gates of the Sybil Brand Institute For Felonious Women. Their reunion, I was told,
was joyous. Mr. Mad Bomber promised his true love a magnificent evening as he
drove her home.
As for me and mine,
we were contemplating a different sort of night.
“The Graduate” and
“Patton” were playing as a double bill at the Venice Fox Theater and Carol and
I had arranged for Marita to baby sit Jason for us. It had been many years
since the Venice Fox had anything to do with 20th Century Fox studios. It was an
independent theater at the bottom of the film food chain and much prized by all
of us Venice rats because the bookings were eclectic, to say the least; the tickets were cheap – 50 cents for a double bill,
plus cartoons and coming attractions – and the counter food included cool
things like freshly made sandwiches on home-baked bread, organic veggies and carafes of plonk (red or white) for a
buck.
They also had a glassed-in area for parents to sit with children and what sounds strange as all hell now, but was considered a luxury then, was that smoking was allowed in that room. People used to take their toddlers to the movies just so they could light up. On that night, however, Jason had the sniffles and we didn’t want to expose him to the night air – never mind the tobacco-filled room. Boy, talk about things Dr. Spock never warned us about.
They also had a glassed-in area for parents to sit with children and what sounds strange as all hell now, but was considered a luxury then, was that smoking was allowed in that room. People used to take their toddlers to the movies just so they could light up. On that night, however, Jason had the sniffles and we didn’t want to expose him to the night air – never mind the tobacco-filled room. Boy, talk about things Dr. Spock never warned us about.
Just as we were about
to head off to the movies, Roger suddenly appeared, knocking on the car
window. When I rolled it down, he shoved a joint in my mouth, then started
chanting like a carnival barker, “Come one, come all, see the Eight Wonder of the
World. It walks, it talks, it crawls on its belly like a reptile.”
Carol pressed fingers
to her temples. “Please, Roger,” she said. “I’m already getting a headache.” I
handed her the joint. “Thank you,” she said, taking it and proceeding to reduce
it – and her headache - to ashes.
“You don’t want to
miss this, Al,” Roger said, pulling another chubby from his shirt pocket.
“We’ve been working on it for days. It’s a big welcome home party for the Mad
Bomber’s wife.”
“I don’t know...” Carol
said, clearly meaning no way in Hades.
She liked Mrs. Mad
Bomber enough – I never told her about the offered rent for sex incident – but
she was adamant about staying clear of their apartment.
“If I get blown up,”
she’d said in the past, “Jason won’t have a mother.”
I couldn’t argue with
her there and I was about to give Roger the brush off, when he leaned into the
car and said in a whisper that hinted of deep dark secrets, suitable for the
hushed halls of ancient Aztec temples: “I figured out how to put a light in a
balloon, Al.”
“No shit,” I said.
Roger gave a very
wise nod and I realized that he was stoned to the gills, but holding up quite well.
“No shit,” he said.
“Come on. You fucking gotta see.”
“What’s Roger talking
about?” Carol said, getting instantly stoned off her toke. “Some kind of
balloon?”
“A light bulb in a
balloon,” Roger corrected.
Carol thought about
this for a toke and a half. As she passed the joint she asked me, “Do you think
he could really do that?”
Roger snorted. “We
did fuckin’ better,” he said. “Come and see.”
He opened the door
and with that we exited, leaving the Venice Fox double bill behind for another
evening to troop down the alley where we were met by a whole contingent of Blue
Meanie Apartment partiers.
As near as I can recall
from the fog of years and narcotics, there was the Guest Of Honor, Mrs. Mad
Bomber – shyly hanging back with her beaming hubby, Mr. Mad Bomber; Roger’s
girlfriend, Nancy; Stoner Tom and his latest girlfriend, a
largish, very cool chick, whose name I don’t recall, but she was a dynamite
reporter for the Daily Breeze, the first woman police reporter in that part of
LA; Jay Thompkins and a date; Kerry Fahey and his latest girlfriend; and last, but not
least, Jack Lishman and a tall, slender girl he’d been dating of late. The lovely Jan was
also there, but flying solo having just discovered that her boyfriend was not only a married man, but a married man who would not leave his wife.
As we approached,
Jack came leaping out of the crowd, grinning like a madman. “Onward,” he cried.
“Onward and upward.”
We all cheered and
headed down Washington toward the beach.
Mr. and Mrs. Mad
Bomber led the parade, cuddling each other and giggling like school children.
Clearly, they were delighted to be together again. The Mad Bomber had a large
object – square in appearance – draped over his shoulder. It was covered with a
poncho liner, so we couldn’t see what it was. However, he did carry it in the
crook of one finger, so I knew it wasn’t very heavy.
Jack had a rolled-up paper bag under his arm, while Roger was temporarily empty-handed. When we passed Shanahan’s, however, he dashed inside just before it closed and grabbed a jug of Red Mountain and some rolling papers, which he passed to Jay, who was an expert at what he called “twisting a fattie.”
Jack had a rolled-up paper bag under his arm, while Roger was temporarily empty-handed. When we passed Shanahan’s, however, he dashed inside just before it closed and grabbed a jug of Red Mountain and some rolling papers, which he passed to Jay, who was an expert at what he called “twisting a fattie.”
We paused at the
Grand Canal bridge to drink wine, smoke dope and ponder the lights rippling on
the water. A kid paddled a surfboard under the bridge, shouting “peace” to us
and down the street the jukebox at the Greek bar and grill was playing Otis Redding’s “Dock Of The
Bay.”
A mellow, magical
mood descended upon the bridge and for some reason Jack decided to lecture us
about how the canals also provided Venice with electricity. Although his
explanation didn’t make any sense to me the next day, at the time it was
supremely profound. Witness the lights shining in the eyes of Jack’s adoring
girlfriend. Or was she just whacked out of her skull?
We continued, passing
the Greek’s place and hooking it across the sands to the rickety Venice Pier.
As usual, there were fishermen gathered at the rails - during the summer it was a prime place to
catch halibut. South of us, a few boats were making their way into the Marina
Channel and to the north we could see the blackened remains of POP pier, lit up
by the not so distant Santa Monica Pier.
Pacific Ocean Park
was an old amusement park built out over the water that had more downs than ups
over the years. Long ago Lawrence Welk had broadcast his radio show from the
main building on the pier. Years later, the Jane Fonda movie – “They Shoot
Horses, Don’t They?” was filmed there. During my senior year in high school –
at Mira Costa in Manhattan Beach – we used to flock to POP for the one dollar
admission price. But after changing hands one time too many, it had burned
down. Arson was suspected.
In fact, the prime
suspect was among our group - the Mad Bomber, himself. We all looked at him as
we filed along the Venice Pier boardwalk, unconsciously taking in the ruins of
POP and the Mad Bomber’s long stride as he headed toward the end of the pier.
The rumor in
Pepperland was that the Mad Bomber had burned down POP. A few said he did for
the money – the bankrupt owners had crossed his palms with silver. Most said he
did it out of hippie civic duty – a kind of early “Monkey Wrench Gang”
intervention on an offense against nature. I never thought the rumor was true,
but if it had been true, I guarantee you that the Mad Bomber would have done it
for altruistic motives. Money just wasn’t his bag, you know?
Now, to understand
what happened next, you have to put your mind back to the summer of 1971. The
baby boom generation was at its youthful height. If you were my age, wherever
you looked there were hordes of other young people with similar ideas, clothes
and music. Surfing was a big deal and during the day, the waters off the
California coast were as crowded with boards and kids as any freeway was jammed
with cars at rush hour.
When we set foot on
the Venice Pier it was a balmy summer night and hundreds upon hundreds of kids
were sprawled out on the beach, eating, drinking, making love and smoking a
shit pot load of dope. The air on the pier was so thick with the lovely smell of
marijuana that it wasn’t necessary to roll a joint. You just took a deep honk
of the sea breezes, Venice style.
The three wise men of
the Blue Meanie Apartments went into action. Roger got busy stuffing a light bulb
into a balloon, while Jack reeled out thin strands of wire, which he attached
to some batteries, then to the lightbulb. The Mad Bomber peeled the poncho from
his burden, revealing a magnificent kite. They huddled over the contraption,
doing this and that – all of which they hid from us.
Finally, it was time.
They stepped back, holding the kite up high. Amazingly, the lightbulb was
glowing inside the balloon. We were all very impressed. But the show was far
from over.
Since Jack was the
fleetest of foot, he was given the honor of launching the kite. He took off
down the boardwalk and when Roger and the Mad Bomber thought he’d gotten up
enough speed they threw the kite into the air. It soared into the night sky,
the glowing balloon bobbing up and down. Then the breeze caught the kite,
lifting it higher. Jack unreeled string as fast as he could, until the amazing
contraption floated just off shore.
First one beach goer,
then another, spotted the balloon.
The crowd gasped in
amazement and a ghostly “Ohhhhh,” floated across the beach.
Jack manipulated the
string and the kite flew down toward the booming seas, then at last moment he
sent the kite aloft again.
“Ahhhh,” went the
crowd.
He did that for
awhile, the balloon swirling up high, then diving down, only to recover at the
last minute.
Then the Mad Bomber
shouted, “Hit it!” And Jack hit it, flipping a little switch.
Immediately there was
a spectacular explosion and the balloon and kite shattered into fiery bits of
light so bright that when they were gone you could still see them flashing in
your mind.
“Ohhhh,” said the
crowd. “Ahhhh.”
And Mrs. Mad Bomber
turned to her husband, tears streaming down her face. “That’s the nicest get
out of jail present I ever fucking had,” she said, throwing her arms around him.
It was an amazing
evening. Made even better the next day when I got to work and the police
reporter called in to say that people had swamped the Venice cop shop
switchboard the night before with reports of UFO sightings just off the Venice
Pier.
NEXT: WILD THINGS
*****
NEW:
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THE EMPIRE DAY 2013
COMMEMORATIVE EDITION
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*****
FREEDOM BIRD: THE SUMMER OF LOVE
GET YOUR STEN ON WITH
THE EMPIRE DAY 2013
COMMEMORATIVE EDITION
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*****
FREEDOM BIRD: THE SUMMER OF LOVE
*****
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
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!
*****
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!
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