GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1041: RASPUTIN

 This song recently came on after one of my Spotify playlists ended, and it's been stuck in my head ever since. It's so deep in there that when I wake up every day, it's already roaring through my synapses. I wondered, what would Mom think of this song? She liked some of my heavier music, so she might have enjoyed this, especially if she knew the subject matter. It hit me then.

I often say that my love of history goes back to when my grandmother on my dad's side got me a book called Don't Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis, and I learned about all the American propaganda I'd been taught at school. I wanted to know what really happened (ah, sweet naivete!), and I have never been bored by it. But my interest went back beyond even that.

(In a perverse twist of fate, it was also school that taught me to distrust that American propaganda. Mr. Torney's US History class at York introduced me to George Orwell and gave me most of the tools I'd need to ferret out bullshit wherever it reigned supreme.)

Because Mom was big into history, and I got an earful of it when I was a li'l kid. Her favorite topic was JFK and Jackie, but her second favorite was Nicholas and Alexandra. Which is why "Rasputin" reminded me of this. It was like opening a secret portal into the past for a very brief memory. Sitting in my mom's Mustang, driving along with the radio on, the wind whipping through the windows, a McDonald's drink in the cupholder clipped to the rubber in the window. She told me the story of Rasputin. She always knew my interests went dark, and she correctly guessed that was the part of the story I'd be interested in.

She did not, by the way, tell me about the alleged story about Rasputin's cock (which is a great name for a rock band, as Dave Barry might say). I found that out when I was researching the black market for famous body parts. That story turned into "A Market for All Things," which was originally published in Strange Sex 3 but is currently available in Dong of Frankenstein and Other Pornos You Can't Jerk It To, should you decide to give it a shot. In case you were wondering, Napoleon's dick suffered much the same fate.*

You can take that one to bed with you. Goodnight, fuckers.

____________________________________________________________

*Fine, fine. Allegedly. For Pete's sake. But, ah, check it out.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1010: THE AGREED UPON FACTS

 As much as I love history, there's an unfortunate side to the beast. It's plagued me since I discovered how interesting history really is, but it wasn't until Gore Vidal that I discovered the perfect phrase for the problem. History is the "agreed upon facts."

The nature of history is kind of dubious. We have all sorts of records, from newspaper articles to journals kept by historical figures. We have a treasure trove of this stuff. But the problem is, what if these primary and secondary sources lied? What if they had skin in the game and decided that history should remember this version of events over another version of the events. To say nothing of the problems of the relativity of perception . . .

I hate to do this, but Mark Twain is just such an instance. A lot of his stories were actually news articles. He just lied to sell more papers. And that really is how newspapers began, more as tabloids than anything else. Twain wasn't the only one playing fast and loose with truth, so how can we trust any of these documents in said treasure trove?

Thankfully there are corroborating sources, but more or less we have to figure out which of these things we can agree upon as facts. That bothers me a great deal. Memories of college return to me. Ghastly things creeping through my head. "What is truth?" it asks through a sewer of a mouth. "What is Truth?" it answers itself. The horror.

It also means a lot of history gets swept under the rug as unimportant to the big picture. So I'm going to put a few quotes here you most certainly never heard during your school years. I'm pretty sure any teacher who dared tell you about it would have been tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. Let's start with John Adams. If you'll recall I mentioned that a few of the Founding Fathers were Deists, a euphemism for atheists. John Adams was not one of them, but he had some interesting words in regards to religion. For those who believe this is a Christian Country(TM), you may want to avert your eyes.

“This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.”
– John Adams

We discussed Benjamin Franklin a little bit in GF #1000, but here's a deeper look at his opinion of the Constitution that you never read in a textbook.

In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an Assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best.

How do I know that these men said these things? I don't. Not to a certainty. And a lot of people wish they hadn't said anything of the sort. But enough people agreed on these facts. I'm sure most would call it revisionist history (a phrase I dislike), but to be fair, a lot of people worked really hard to make sure we didn't encounter these quotes in the course of our regular lives.

The root of the problem is lying. I forget the movie's name, but there was a flick about a world where people were incapable of lying, not even little white lies like, "I'm fine," or "You look great," or etc. I don't advocate for that kind of world, but to quote Metallica, "When a man lies, he murders some part of the world." But, since you come here for class, I'll dig back further into the vaults. I'll leave you with a quote from Montaigne:

Lying is a hateful and accursed vice. We have no other tie upon one another, but our word. If we did but discover the horror and consequences of it, we should pursue it with fire and sword, and more justly than other crimes.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #847: PRESIDENTIAL AGONY

 The primary season is almost over, and thank fuck for that. Because there are some things more agonizing than presidential election cycles, but there aren't many of them. We didn't always do things this way. It used to be lot different, and slowly over the years we got stuck with this awful system that still needs to be fixed. But we're 200+ years into this thing. If someone was going to fix it, it would have been fixed by now.

But when America was in its infancy we had a different method. State delegates would choose electors (thus birthing the Electoral College, sadly, which is one of the things we really need to get rid of), and those electors would look at who is running and make their votes. The guy with the most votes is the president. The guy with the second most votes is the vice president. The rest of the lot can go kick rocks. That worked pretty well for the first election. In case you didn't know, George Washington was elected president UNANIMOUSLY. The one and only president to have been elected in such a fashion. But once he left office and political parties formed, a lot of flies got in the ointment.

I've talked about the Jefferson vs. Burr election before and how we have an amendment to the Constitution because of it. (And that Burr should have been our third president.) But that was the breaking point for the system. The votes for president and vice president would be separate from here on out, and Congressional caucuses decided who the candidates were.

About twenty years later it changed again. People wanted powerful state leaders to have more say in elections. So the state leaders of each party got together to choose the candidates, and we lived by this rule for a long, long time.

We really adopted primaries during the 1952 race. Politicians had to press the flesh of, not citizens, but industry and political leaders. They were the ones who would choose the candidates, and each person running had to suck the requisite amount of dick to get the nomination. You know the old joke about how candidates are selected in dark smoke filled rooms? There's a basis in fact for that. That's the way we've done it almost since the country began. 

And then came March 31, 1968. President Lyndon B. Johnson made the following announcement to the American public: "I should not permit the presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes. Accordingly I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

First of all, the idea that a president would not want to get involved in partisan divisions is absolutely batshit crazy. But I have long held that whoever sits in that Oval Office is the president for ALL Americans, not just the Americans who voted for him. So, according to the job description, the president needs to serve all Americans. You can see most presidents doing that EXCEPT for one. I think you know who I'm talking about. So LBJ wasn't crazy when he said those things. He was doing his job. But can you imagine a president today saying something like that? Never mind taking himself out of the race, but not catering to just his voters? That's pretty impressive.

An incumbent president is always the nominee because they're very difficult to defeat. Imagine the Democratic Party's horror when they realized they had a sudden vacuum and needed to fill it with a candidate ASAP.

Which is why the voters now decide the candidates with primaries and conventions and such. Which is why we have to pay attention during the primaries, no matter how much we want to ignore the dog and pony show. We already know the big boys, but with a new candidate you have to catch them early before they become . . . candidate-y? They're more likely to fuck up in the early days than after they've had the chance to become seasoned.

But we don't have to worry about that this time out. Biden and Trump is the rematch fuckin' nobody asked for, but it's what we're stuck with. I don't say that I hate people often, because hate is a strong word, but I hate, loathe, despise, etc. Donald Trump. I don't like Biden, either. I think he's a business as usual politician whose only saving grace is his ability to beat a loathsome toad who once squatted in the Oval Office.

Gun to the head? I guess I'd have to go with Biden if only to deny that cum-gargling dumpster fire another term in office.

So yeah. Things used to be different and not quite so agonizing, but we have more power than we did way back when. It would be nice to not have the Electoral College. Why would you want to choose the people who will choose the president? Doesn't that sound like bullshit to you?

I don't know why I waste time with asking that question. We all hate the Electoral College, but we refuse to do anything about it because it's something we've always done. Tradition can eat my sack, balls and shaft.

To quote a great man . . .

"Well, what'll I do now? Go to sleep? Pull the pud? We need new pornos! Well, guess I'm still writing."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #840: THE MAYBERRY MINUTEMEN

 

When you're in the hospital, you're at the mercy of the TV gods. I'm kind of surprised I didn't get any M*A*S*H in. I almost always do. And no Gunsmoke, either. Very odd. But thankfully the hospital gets a few good channels: TVLand, Comedy Central, AMC and FX. I was usually stuck with The Office, which I've seen a million times and is somehow still good, but not even Comedy Central can show it 24/7.

So I lucked out with some Andy on TVLand. It may come as a surprise to a lot of people, but I like The Andy Griffith Show. Well, let me rephrase. I like all but the final season of tAGS, the one without Don Knotts. For some reason unfathomable to me, that last season focused on all the morality lessons everyone remembers the show for. Before that season, the morals were kind of fucked. Like, never tell anyone the truth if it's going to hurt their feelings. That's a major theme with those early seasons. Maybe they needed to lean on something else since Barney was no longer in Mayberry. I give Don Knotts a lot of grief, but he really was good as Barney. Better than good, supreme. He did such a good job that I'm sure there are people to this day who think he wasn't acting, that he really is like that, Mr. Furley not withstanding.

Anyway, one of my favorite episodes came on while I was in the hospital, the one where the kids have a new teacher. She does things a little different from the old teacher, and it's driving Opie crazy. At breakfast he tells his dad that history homework is too hard for him, and Andy makes the mistake of saying that he never had a head for history. He says that as long as Opie does the best he can honestly do, then he'd be proud of his son regardless of the outcome.

At this point Barney can't wait to tell everyone that he was an A++++++ history student. When Andy tests him on the Emancipation Proclamation, Barney does everything he can do to get out of answering the question EXCEPT answering it.

Regardless, Opie ignores the part about doing his best and misinterprets what Andy actually told him. When he's called on by the teacher the next day, he digs in his heels and tells her that his dad said he didn't have to do his history homework. A few other boys in class join his cause, which understandably angers the teacher. She then goes to visit Andy at his office and reads him the Riot Act.

Andy doesn't even attempt to try to explain what actually happened. Instead he feels lower than whale shit and then tricks the boys into becoming avid history fans.

I'm sure by now you've figured out why this episode appeals to me so much. Unlike Barney I'm not going to tell you I was an A+++++ history student. I got Bs and Cs in school. But I love the fuck out of history. So much crazy shit has happened over the course of known history (to say nothing of delicious speculation as to what happened during the time when history is lost to us!) I find it impossible to believe that people don't think history is interesting. Why isn't the entire country made up of people like Andy's Mayberry Minutemen?

The fault is with school, unfortunately. Teachers do a difficult enough job without me piling more shit on them, but the way history is taught is atrocious. Historical figures are just that. They're not people. They never lived and breathed because we're not supposed to understand them as people. But before they were a bunch of words in stolid history books, they *were* people. People who picked their noses. Who didn't know everything. Who sometimes did the best they could and sometimes did the worst they could on purpose.

I remember I was in college reading a Graham Swift novel for a postmodernism class when I saw him do the history/his story thing. That was the first time I'd seen that, and it opened up the world to me. History should be taught like a STORY, not a series of names and dates and acts to be memorized. When Andy convinces the kids that history is actually fun, he describes it as a story with characters and plot. That gets the kids' engines running, and the next thing their teacher knows, they're fighting each other over who gets to explain the founding of Jamestown.

There's another thing teachers do that gets in the way, but I'm not going to get too much into it. I already said my piece, but the other thing is that American institutions want history to be taught ideally. What I mean is, they want America's kids to grow up to be productive members of society, and it's helpful if they just believe a bunch of comfortable lies instead of learning what may have actually happened. You already know my opinion of that kind of thing. The most common example being, hey, Thomas Jefferson! What a genius! Can you imagine what this country would be like without his guidance? And he was the third president of the country! Completely ignoring that the man who said all men are created equal owned slaves and fathered at least one child with a slave. Just knowing that is enough to fuck a lot of people up. So perhaps we shouldn't introduce the idea that the sex might not have been consensual, at least until they get their head around that first part.

Most of what I learned about history is stuff I had to unlearn because it was bullshit stuffed into my head in an attempt to make me into an obedient taxpayer. If you want to see an example of how history *should* be taught, check out Hardcore History. But you knew I'd say that. You've been reading these things for quite a while.

Goodnight, you lovely fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #828: ME AND THE HISTORY CHANNEL

 

As many of you know I'm a huge fan of history. So you'd think the History Channel would be right up my alley. And it was, kind of. And then it started morphing into something weird, like how the Learning Channel doesn't do educational shows.

I happened upon an issue of the History Channel Magazine, and it was so good I became a lifetime member of the History Channel Club. I got some neat things for free, including a Civil War chess set, and I was supposed to get every issue of the magazine for the rest of my life. I loved those issues. They were chockful of excellent articles going into depth on historical events. I learned so goddam much from that magazine. It was the high point of my relationship with the brand.

Because soon the only history you could get was WWII history, almost always stuff about Hitler and Nazis. And you had to tune in late at night because during they day they ran tabloid bullshit. 

You know exactly what I mean by tabloid bullshit.

I enjoy stupid stories about aliens, but I don't want to get that through a venue that calls itself the History Channel. I want stories about history. Actual history. From actual historians.

And then the magazine changed, too. It became Warrior and was exclusively about war history. I'm interested in war history, too, but I want more than just that. And it seemed that the new magazine wasn't interested in non-American wars. Every time I got the issue I flipped to the TOC to see if there was anything interesting. There almost never was. When Warrior stopped showing up in my mailbox I did not bother trying to find out what happened to my "lifetime subscription."

That was the last straw. I ended my relationship with the History Channel then and there. I haven't looked back since.

Except . . .

When I'm cleaning up around the house I like to play something in the background. It's helpful if it's educational, in particular about history. On Paramount+ I found a show called 10 Things You Don't Know About.

I have not seen any episodes hosted by Henry Rollins

Often times I stopped what I was doing while host David Eisenbach told me stuff that I really didn't know about. I know more about unusual history than almost everyone I know, and I still didn't know 75% of this. I only watched the first season, as the second was not yet available. Apparently they got Henry Rollins to take over for Eisenbach. Not sure why. I like Rollins, but Eisenbach was a great host. Maybe a bit unkempt, and he always looked a little hungover, but he knew his shit.

It surprised me to learn that this is an actual show on the History Channel. Kind of. It's on something called H2. Maybe it's like when MTV invented an all music channel to explain to people where the music videos went. What, real history? Oh. You can get that on H2. You sure you don't want 100% true facts about bigfoot and aliens? We probably got some Hitler stuff around here somewhere. He wanted an army of werewolves, you know.

I highly recommend that show. I hope they post season 2 eventually. I'll miss Eisenbach, but Henry Rollins is probably an awesome host.

AH-AH-AH! Stop right there. I know exactly what you were about to bring up.

I'm pretty sure Rollins was not thrilled to be there for Night Visions. Every time they brought him out to do his Serling schtick he was always terse and monotone, like he knew it was just a job and he was there for the paycheck. I was excited for Night Visions. I was let down. I stuck around because I wanted it to be good, but that's a lesson I've learned and have not repeated for a very long time.

If you want to know what a real shitshow Night Visions was, you should hunt down Thomas F. Monteleone's Mothers and Fathers Italian Association piece on how they fucked him over for his episode, "Hate Puppet." Monteleone was outed not too long ago for being a terrible human being, so don't pay to read it. Find it online somewhere. Or buy a used copy of the issue of Cemetery Dance in which it appeared (as that way the money won't reach him). It's a fucked up story. Too bad. William Atherton is in that one, and he was good with what he was given. He's always great. He was good as the mayor in the new Ghostbusters.

At any rate, maybe there's hope for the History Channel after all. I just won't hold my breath.

PS: Eisenbach apparently teamed up with Larry Flynt for a book called One Nation Under Sex! So I guess I have to track that down now. Here's your extra credit: read this interview with Eisenbach about this book here. I think you'll find it very interesting.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #429: AN UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORY

 I'm sure you recall my obsession with Gore Vidal's Empire books upon my escape from the psych ward. I found myself in a Half Price Books in Orland Park on Sunday, and I picked up a couple more Vidal historical novels. (And a crime novel he wrote under a pen name before he was Gore Vidal. But that's a story for another day.)

To borrow from Dan Carlin, I'm not a historian. I'm a fan of history. One of the things I truly enjoy about this series is that Vidal didn't rely on history class notes. He went out in search of the Truth (before the age of the internet, no less!) and wrote these books from that perspective. That got him into some trouble. For example, his theory that Hamilton accused Burr of fucking his own daughter. Or Lincoln's plan that, upon abolishing slavery in the US, he would send all former slaves to Grenada. Ending racism by deporting all former slaves, thus making US a white only country, is a very bizarre plan, but it was also a very real plan.

I wonder if I would have been upset by these "revisionist" theories if I hadn't learned distrust in what I was told as a teenager. Because I bought everything I learned in history class up until Mr. Tourney's class, where I was introduced to 1984 and the concept of doublespeak.

Try an experiment. Try sitting through ten minutes of Fox News sometime. My grandmother watches it religiously, and I pay attention when I'm with her. The biggest boogeyman these nutjobs have right now is something called Critical Race Theory. They are appalled that propaganda is being taught in schools.

And they're right. Just not the way they think. First off, CRT is not taught to children but to college students. But never mind that for now because I have a problem with the propaganda being taught to children as young as 5 years old.

If you know me, then you know my go-to move, which is a pop quiz, hotshot. Who discovered America? A lot of people will say Columbus. Those who are smarter than the average bear will mention the Vikings who got there long before that Italian asshole. But that's wrong, too. It's hard to discover a land where people had already been living for thousands of years.

And if you dare to suggest that Columbus was a slaver and a rapist and a murderer, then God's mercy on you. Why is that idea so difficult for most Americans to digest? It's because they were indoctrinated at an early age. Gotta get 'em when they're young and impressionable, as the cigarette companies used to say. It's a very powerful form of brainwashing. It's so sugar-coated that it makes me want to hurl. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Most people find it hard to believe that the Founding Fathers who said that all men are created equal, didn't actually mean that, but they did. Who counts as those "men?" You gotta be white, male and a landowner. I'm sure if they would have thought about it, those men would also have to be heterosexual. Hell, by their standards most of us wouldn't be able to vote, either. Renting an apartment? Stay at home, non-landowner.

I believe that we're in this mess because of this propaganda that we were all--ALL--exposed to as children. It never occurs to most that what they learned in school might actually be a nefarious plot to force your allegiance to your country. But those godless Commies in China? They need to stop their propaganda and teach their kids the truth!

It's a fucking mess. It really is. Land of the Free really is the biggest lie we were ever taught in school. Because it never has and probably never will be. I'm all for teaching CRT to children. Otherwise this problem is going to continue ad infinitum.

This is a shirt I actually own. It's in my house somewhere.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #303: GORE VIDAL AND HISTORICAL FICTION

 My first day on the psych ward. After a torturous meeting with one of the doctors, who looked oddly like Jerry from Parks and Rec, only meaner, and after having my body gone over in search of damage, kind of like when you drop off your car to get body work done (Hey, you came in here with that, so we didn't do that to you), I was shown to my room. The first thing I noticed was that there were two beds in there, so the possibility of getting a roommate was very real. It never happened, but if it did, I was prepared with a bowel full of farts to discourage any stranger from assaulting me. And then I was left to my own devices.

I asked if I could get the books I brought with me. I had to assure them that none of the three were hardcover, because apparently hardcover books could be used as weapons on the psych ward. They said they would see what the doctors had to say, and then I sat down at the desk provided to me in the room. Much to my surprise, the former patient for my room was a reader and had left all their books behind. I decided to pass the time by reading one of them.

I chose Empire by Gore Vidal because Vidal was the only author I knew of the bunch. I'd read essays by him previously, and I was very familiar with his screenplay for the notorious Caligula film. I'd never read any of his novels, so I gave him a try. I thoroughly enjoyed it to the point that I took it with me when they let me go. It turns out that this is part four of his take on American history. The first is simply called Burr because one of the characters learned that he was the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr (which apparently wasn't an uncommon thing back then; Burr fucked like a maniac). Empire covers the period of time leading up to the so-called American Century. It tries its best to explain why our backwoods isolationist country decided to become the biggest empire since Britain. I did some research, and it turns out that Vidal really, really put his all into this. A lot of it is historically accurate (though there are some artistic licenses taken). Still, you know what they say about who writes the history books, so we can never be too sure.

This book introduced me to one of the great unsung public figures of the late 19th century: John Hay. I remembered from history class very little about him, but when you look him up, he truly was important. He had no idea that he was, but by the time of his death he helped mold the America that our great-grandparents stood witness to. He was a very close friend and confidant to Abraham Lincoln, who was the first US president to die before his very eyes. Every dead president from then to McKinley had Hay in their presence. Hay is a fascinating guy, but what made me enjoy the portrayal most is that he plays it like a misanthrope. He and Teddy Roosevelt get along, but Hay is one of the many people who make fun of him constantly. If you like history as much as I do, I highly recommend you do some research into Hay.

Hay has stuck with me ever since I got off the psych ward. There are two masterful scenes with him in this book. The one I'll not speak of. You have to experience that for yourself. The other? Well, allow me to quote, and I think you'll get why I got so much pleasure from this book.

Quote: There was a long, loud applause, as Theodore finished. In the north a black cloud appeared. Taft helped Hay up. To Hay's surprise, Taft asked, "Was it here that Lincoln gave his last inaugural address?"

Hay nodded. "Yes. Right here. I remember now. There was rain at first. Mr. Johnson, the Vice-President, was drunk. Then the rain stopped, and the President read his speech."

Taft looked thoughtful. "I know that speech by heart."

"We never suspected, then, that we were all so--historical. We just saw ourselves caught up in this terrible mess, trying to get through the day. I remember there was applause before he had finished one sentence." Hay had the odd sense that he was now, if not in two places at once, in the same place as two different times, simultaneously, and he heard, again, the President's voice rise over the applause, and say with great simplicity the four terrible words: "And the war came."

"We lost a generation." Taft was oddly flat.

"We lost a world," said Hay, amazed that he himself had survived so long in what was now, to him, so strange a country.

OK, me again. There is one more thing I'd like to say before I post this and go to bed. We almost had a Trump situation just after the turn of the century. Thank fuck no one in their right mind took William Randolph Hearst seriously. This book was written long before Trump even thought about running for president, but with my modern eyes, I can't help but make the comparison. A business tycoon with no regard for truth, creating wars just to make insane amounts of money, all in the name of making sure that he is worshipped throughout the rest of history? Yeah, that does sound pretty familiar. For those who don't remember very much about our history, Hearst started the Spanish American War simply to sell newspapers. In retrospect, it was considered Yellow Journalism. I can't help but think that while Hearst is gone, he still has a grandson in charge of his mega conglomerate fuck fest. I've said it here before, and I'll say it again. History is not that far behind us. Life is a constant cause and effect. I'm certain that we're in this horrible second Civil War because of all the crazy bullshit Hearst flung, like a monkey at the zoo throwing feces at visitors. And somehow his visitors ate it all up.

Does that, too, sound familiar?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #288: IT STARTED WITH A BAR

Last night's entry reminded me of the old way of doing things. I've said it before and I'll say it again now: I believe that the 'Eighties was the death toll of the 'Fifties. Think about all the nostalgia projects that came out in the 'Eighties about the time of DA haircuts, cars with fins and that old time rock 'n' roll. Not much of that leaked into the 'Nineties. That was when the world really, really began to change.


I grew up in the 'Eighties. I remember what it used to look like. At the risk of sounding like an old fart, I remember a time when stores closed at five and were always closed on Sundays. Cigarettes were everywhere, and the only reruns you could catch were from the 'Fifties and 'Sixties. Oh yeah, and you could hit your kid in public and no one would say anything about it. Women still belonged either pregnant or in the kitchen (preferably both). You had to be white to live in my hometown of Elmhurst. So don't get the idea I'm getting nostalgic in my old age. But I think about things a lot.


How much do you know about your own town? I love history, so I know a lot about mine. I recently tried to remember, though, what mom and pop store used to be where the Jewel/Osco is today. I remember going there a lot with my mom or grandma. Mom's gone. Grandma doesn't remember. One day I stumbled upon the answer because I discovered that the Elmhurst History Museum actually has a lot of old pictures up on their website. I looked through them all until I found a picture of the place. Here is a link in case you want to peruse some of the sights. If you're from Elmhurst yourself, I think you'll find a lot to interest you there.


It started with a bar. Without that bar, Elmhurst would not exist. But there it was, and the town grew up around it. There is a rock where the bar used to be on Cottage Hill and St. Charles, but it's all residential. The guy who ran the bar got the US to put a post office in the bar, and so the town began to really fire on all cylinders. It was called Hill Cottage back then, but soon changed to Elmhurst due to the amount of elm trees. This was before Dutch Elm disease took most of them out.


The clincher came when Union Pacific wanted to put a railroad through town. That's when Elmhurst truly began and slowly morphed into the small city I live in today. Some of the pictures showed images of places I know to be residential now, but were nothing but prairie back then. My junior high was Sandburg. It used to be Elmhurst Junior High. Carl Sandburg lived here for a while, but I had no idea he was there when they changed the name of the junior high. I see people fishing and cutting ice out of Salt Creek near what is now Spring Road (guess why they called it that). And it's hard for me to imagine horses walking down Park and York, much less actually see it in a picture. It's interesting to see what was there before they put the underpass in (which they surprisingly did when I was a mere year old). And then there were the gas stations that looked a lot like Gomer Pyle's on Andy Griffith.


What do you know about your own hometown's history? In the end, maybe it means nothing. At the same time, aren't you interested to see what came before? How did your town begin?


Some people laugh at my horrible attempts at trying to nickname Elmhurst the Suburban Prairie, much like Warren Ellis has the Thames Delta. It is very much tongue-in-cheek, but at the same time, after looking at those pictures, well. It makes some measure of sense.


Look at your own historical museums. Tell me what your nickname for your living space is.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #204: GHOSTS OF THE CIVIL DEAD

I went out to Pennsylvania this weekend. It's the third time I've been to one of the original 13 colonies. I tend not to count New York because I was only at the airport there for a connecting flight to Ireland. The other was Georgia. A friend lived in Tennessee back then, and the only airport he could get me at was in Atlanta.


But Pennsylvania is waaaaay better than Georgia. Georgia is a shithole. No offense to anyone who lives there, but the Civil War, in particular William T. Sherman, really did a number on that place. It never recovered. There is a sense of dilapidation about the place. Of desolation and decay. Of death. It's falling apart and has no hope of ever recovering. The Reconstruction left that state behind.


Kevin Strange and I rode into PA at night, so we didn't get to see a lot of it. I'll talk more about our trip later and possibly in installments, but I saw a lot of interesting things in PA. It's just as old as Georgia, but there isn't the same feeling of abandonment.


I live in Illinois, in a suburb of Chicago, and around here we don't give a shit about old things. If something turns fifty, it's obsolete. We have to tear that shit down and build something new. There are no old houses or structures in my town. I live in a townhouse made in the 'Fifties, and it's falling apart. I imagine that very soon we're going to get a visit from an Elmhurst official wishing to buy this place so they can tear it down.


PA has no desire to do that kind of thing.


Let me explain. Kevin's GPS took us off course for a McDonald's run, and as we tried to get back on track it told us to take the back streets. All we saw was corn. That's old hat for me. I live on the Suburban Prairie, and corn is fucking everywhere as soon as you travel beyond the 'burbs.


But Kevin's GPS was telling me to go straight down one road, and all I saw was what looked like a house in the middle of the road. It seemed like the GPS was asking me to blaze down the driveway and plow through this house. I had The Fear.


It took me a moment to realize that it wasn't a house. It was a covered fucking bridge. I'd never seen one in real life before. When I was a kid we had a . . .  I don't know what to call it. It's not a painting. It's not a sculpture. It's a work of art. It's . . . I don't know. But it depicts a covered bridge. I remember it from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." I remember it from Joe Hill's NOS4A2. But in real life? I had no idea these things existed. Awed, I drove through it.


I was kind of excited to see any evidence of the Amish. Again, I've only seen the kind of thing in movies or literature. We caught a fleeting glimpse of a dude in a horse-drawn buggy. We don't have that kind of thing where I live.


We were staying with Mike Lombardo. On Saturday night we were walking through his area of town, and I couldn't help but notice how old every house was. In Elmhurst they would all be torn down or labeled historical locations and thus protected. In PA they were just business as usual. I was absolutely fascinated. Kevin and Lombardo were lost in conversation, but I couldn't help but stare at and admire these old buildings that had modern people living in them.


And then we drove home. We started out pre-dawn, but as we went the sun rose and illuminated everything we'd missed on the way in. We saw the mountains we drove under thanks to the tunnels that had us thinking about DAYLIGHT and that one scene from THE STAND. But more importantly I noted the fog. It was everywhere. It clung to the mountains and in some cases shrouded them so heavily we didn't even know they were there until later. It was haunting.


We drove close to Gettysburg. I kind of wanted to see the old battlefield. I own a bullet from the site during the Civil War. I couldn't help but think about the history that lurked in that fog, hidden within the mountains. I don't know if there were any unrecorded skirmishes that happened in those areas we saw, but they certainly had soldiers marching through there on their way to killing. Getting killed. Or maybe getting wounded enough for a good ol' fashioned field amputation, which I learned a lot about from going to the Mutter Museum in Philly.


Years ago there was a movie called GHOSTS OF THE CIVIL DEAD. I would not have learned about it if not for Nick Cave being an actor in it. I love that title. It gives the perfect phrase to what I felt as I drove through the foggy mountains. I could feel the history around me, inarticulate in its ways but a presence nonetheless.


I love living in Elmhurst. When I was younger and thought that writers got good money for what they did (thanks, Stephen King . . .) I fantasized about my living arrangements. I would spend my springs and autumns in Elmhurst (because it's the perfect environment for those seasons), and I would live in Las Vegas during the winter, Canada in the summer. But honestly I've never seen myself seriously living anywhere other than Elmhurst. This place is in my blood. My bones. My soul.


For the first time in my life I considered living elsewhere. I loved the environment of Pennsylvania so much that I wanted to pull up roots and travel across the country. It's a wonderful place. It's got a great vibe. It has the ghosts of the civil dead.


I'll probably stick with Elmhurst, but goddam it felt good to be in Pennsylvania.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #26: OLD PEOPLE ARE KIND OF COOL

Not many of you know about my non-genre work. That's OK. I'm not Thad Beaumont or anything. While I love everything I write, even the clunkers, I'm not going to turn into a dick-stroking pretentious fuck. My fucked up horror and bizarro are obvious favorites of mine, but I DO write other things.


Namely "The Hand that Shook the World," which appeared in a literary magazine called THE BRACELET CHARM. (I'd post a link here, but it would seem that they're so old school that they don't have an internet presence, which is cool in its own way.) This story is narrated by a WWII soldier who just came home after the a-bombs were dropped on Japan, and he runs into an old man who tells him a story about how he was a drummer boy at Gettysburg in the Civil War.


When you think about it, history isn't just a string of events that happened. It's a collection of memories. The winners get to write history, of course. We all know that. But . . . that's not the whole truth, because sometimes the losers survive to throw their two-cents in. It's not much, but it's enough to make people doubt, which I greatly appreciate.


Today, in 2014, we look back and we recognize three generations who can tell us history: our own, our parents and our grandparents. Very few of us have great-grandparents who can do this. Yet, in an odd way, we do because our grandparents REMEMBER at least three generations before them.


I'm lucky enough to still have both of my grandparents on my mother's side still here. John and Shirley Kopoulos. They are full of stories. Gramps was born in 1927, and Grandma was born in 1930. They were alive to experience Prohibition. My grandfather tried to lie about his age to get into WWII (and failed). It's great to get those first-person accounts from them. All you have to do is listen and absorb.


But there's one extra step you can take. Both of my grandparents remember their grandparents, who were alive up to 100 years before their prime. Those are the stories that get REALLY interesting. For example, my great-grandfather used to run a shoe repair store. At one point, the place caught fire, and he was severely burned in it. So badly that all the skin on one of his hands was burned to the bone. How did the doctors fix it? BY SEWING HIS HAND INTO HIS STOMACH SO THE SKIN COULD GROW BACK. Can you imagine having something like that done to you? Of course I put that in a book once. It never got published, but it still had a profound effect on me.


But that's just a personal touch. If you still have your grandparents with you, and you're roughly the same age as me (thirty-six), then you have access to people who remember people who were born during the Civil War, maybe even earlier. Why are you not talking to them and asking for their knowledge?


Those who have actually read "The Hand that Shook the World" will have an objection: the old man in the wheelchair had lied about his involvement with Gettysburg. Yes, that is a real problem with history, but to be honest with you, I'm not too concerned with that. Remember, ALL of history is a recollection of individuals. How can you know for sure what really happened?


You can only be sure of the quality of the story you just heard. There are a lot of old people still around. Ask them questions. Learn a thing or two. You never know: your grandfather's dad might have met someone like Teddy Roosevelt, and how awesome would that be?


My grandmother isn't very vocal about the past, but my grandfather has great stories. I think I'll tell a few of them in the near future. Because let's face it, famous people from the past are ONLY famous because enough people thought it was important to tell stories about them.























Still with me? OK, if I've peaked your interest in "The Hand that Shook the World," it can be found in THE BRACELET CHARM Quarterly Winter Edition 2012. I've marketed this story longer than ANY other story I've written. Seriously, it took me fifteen years to find a home for it, and I'm glad I did. It's possible to find it online, but it's not likely. I wish you the best of luck. And thank you, as always, for reading.