GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #660: DEAD TO THE WORLD

 

I find myself reading another of the Sookie Stackhouse books, which were made into the HBO series, True Blood. Dead to the World is the one that season four is based on, the one where Eric has amnesia. Something comes up in the book, and I wish to fuck they'd put it in the TV show.

There's a scene where Eric, who is confused and doesn't remember who he is, has time to kill, so Sookie lets him watch her VHS tapes (!) of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And Eric thinks it's hilarious! I laughed ridiculously hard at that in the book, and I imagine I would have laughed myself into a hernia if I'd seen it on the show.

It reminded me of something else they left out of the show: Bubba. I understand why they didn't use Bubba, but still. I would have loved that shit. If you haven't read the books, they're about a world in which vampires reveal themselves to the world in an attempt to live peacefully side by side with humans. It turns out that one of the vampires is a very, very famous singer who everyone thinks is dead. On August 16, 1977, in a Memphis morgue, a vampire night attendant sees who he has in his freezer and detects a faint sign of life. The attendant is such a big fan that he feels the need to turn him into a vampire. The only problem is, he was too far gone. When he became a vampire, he wasn't all there. Don't you dare call him by the name you know him as. He doesn't like to think of the past. Call him by his preferred name, Bubba.

The show did a few things right that the books really didn't do well. I'm thinking mainly of Lafayette not getting killed at the beginning of season two as he was in the beginning of the second book. But still. Come on. Bubba would have been great on the show. I guarantee if they'd done that, people would still be talking about True Blood now.

Ah well.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #559: THE FILMWALKS

Theater no more.

You may have noticed that a friend of mine, Rob Tannahill, has been doing readings of my work and posting them to YouTube. I've known him for many years. Holy shit, I think it's been 30 years. Anyway, he started up a blog recently, and it's pretty good. However, I think you should read this one before continuing here.

So yeah. I'm Bubba. And I remember Glam Kid, though I have no idea what he's been up to. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen him since high school. And I remember that walk, although I'm pretty sure we didn't see Wayne's World. I remember that night specifically because on the walk back to Rob's, Glam Kid had to take a piss behind what I think was a White Hen back then. As Rob and I waited, a stranger came up to us with a lost dog poster. He asked us if we'd seen a Rottweiler, which we had not. When Glam Kid came back it was in a slight panic because he'd heard our conversation, and as he stood by a dumpster with his dick in his hand, all he could think about was a Rottweiler running at him in the darkness and biting his junk off.

There were two Hillside theaters, and neither of them are still there. Oddly, they're both churches now. Rob's thinking of Hillside Square Theater, and you can see the church that's there now in the picture above. And the nearby office buildings he mentions didn't become office buildings. There's an old folks home there now, but the weed smoking and the ghost stories are accurate.

Oak Brook also had two theaters back then, but neither one of them is there anymore. Even weirder, there are two theaters there now, neither where the old ones were.

The wilderness we walked through to get to Oak Brook.

Rob's talking about Harger Road. It's a shame that it's no longer the wilderness it was back then. There's a forest preserve nearby where I go to read sometimes, but a lot of the woods we walked through on that road are gone, replaced by homes. There's even a home where you have to cross a bridge to get to it. It's technically not a moat, but if I lived there, it would be a moat. Luckily there is a small stretch of woods still there, and I occasionally drive down there if I'm feeling nostalgic.

I remember one winter night when we went back there and saw the flashing lights of a couple of police cars. Rob got super paranoid, and I had yet to learn a healthy fear of the cops. They were not there looking for teenagers to hassle, though. A car had skidded on the ice so badly it had flipped over and was on its side. The cops were too busy with real shit to bother us that night.

I do remember the night of Se7en very clearly, though. I know exactly why he tried the running jump. Even back then it was very difficult for a horror movie to get to me. Very few of them do. But the Sloth scene in Se7en did the trick, and Rob was very pleased that something had finally got to me. He wanted to run and do a pirouette around an old fashioned street light near a bench in sort of a victory move, like he was in Singin' in the Rain or something, and that's when he tripped and fell. Much hilarity ensued.

Although he does exaggerate my fame maybe more than a little. Having said that, though, I would have never imagined, at that age, that I'd be in the position I'm in now, and that is very cool. People read my books. Strangers read my books, which is even more surprising. A few name horror authors have read my books, which I think is the most impressive thing of all.

But even if those places are gone, I'm certain that he's right. Our ghosts cavort in those places, and the people who live there have no idea. Unless they catch a whiff of Rob's weed . . .