GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #1015: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ROB TANNAHILL!

 

Right now my hetero lifemate, Rob Tannahill, is probably seething that I've forgotten his birthday. I have not. Surprise, ye bastard ye!

I've known him since I was 14 and he was 15. We briefly went to the same high school, and we met through our English teacher, Mr. Sibley, who was a former player for the Chicago Bulls, himself. We were in separate classes. Mr. Sibley knew we were both writers, so he had us swap stories and tell each other what we thought. Fast forward a few decades, and here we are.

Which reminds me, he's got a bunch of stuff out, including some music, but if you want to get to know him best, you should go for Prince Junkie, which details his life fairly well, or at least the early draft I read did. If you know him and would like to wish him a happy birthday, you should buy this. Or even if you don't know him, this is the easiest way to get into his work. He's also an artist, and if you want to see what he's capable of, check out GF #1000 for a piece I commissioned from him. Or, if you've got a twisted mind, you can check out The Cocaine! Bros., a webcomic by the both of us. Hunter and Tucker are evil and horrible bastards, kind of like what if MAGA assholes were Looney Tunes characters.

Happy birthday, Rob.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #591: ELVIS

 Yesterday would have been Elvis's 88th birthday. Or actually was his birthday depending on what you believe. Personally I think an impersonator died on that Graceland toilet, and the real Elvis went down with JFK fighting a mummy at an old folks home in Texas. It costs me nothing to believe this, and it hurts no one, so there we go.

Anyway, let's put Elvis on hold for a moment. We'll get back to him.

Read this first. Then read the rest of this to the tune of this Megadeth song. (Not "Holy Wars . . . The Punishment Due," in case you're wondering before you click the link.)

That picture is from, I think, Halloween 1997. None of these people are CJ or Eric, but that's Rob with the innocent look of childlike wonder on his face, which was very uncharacteristic of him. Those are my hands on the right.

Yeah, our Call of Cthulhu games got pretty fucking wild. I remember the night of the mercy killings. I think the argument was actually over how bullets would impact a lesser Great Old One. 

On another night, during the dread campaign known as The Mask of Nyarlathotep, Rob got arrested. The cops were there because they thought there was a murder in progress. It was a hot summer night, and CJ didn't have air conditioning, so we took a break from the game and went up on the roof. Rob felt the need to tickle me so much that a struggle ensued (and yes, I'm very ticklish), and one of the neighbors thought two of us (Rob and CJ) were trying to throw the third (me) off the roof. She called the cops, and they sent out almost the entire force.

I remember us looking down at Fellow's Ct and seeing a shit-ton of cops, us wondering if they were there for us. We decided to go back down when we saw even more cops pulling up behind the building. They were definitely there for us. They followed us into the apartment, and they found CJ's booze collection on a window pane inside. CJ was 18 at the time, but they didn't arrest him because his dad's name was on the lease, so technically it was his dad's booze. Technically.

I remember we had Double Gulps from 7-Eleven, and one of the cops said, "What did you put in this?"

"Coke," CJ said.

"I'll bet."

"You wanna taste?" CJ asked.

The cop did not want a taste.

They let us go except for Rob because he had an outstanding warrant at the time. He might still have warrants in this state. It's hard to tell when it comes to him.

But my favorite night of gaming came when we were still in high school. Both of us. He left during his sophomore year, I think. I remember we were in his old room on the south of Elmhurst. I forget the specifics of the game, but I remembered it was a time travel campaign. He was playing a Southern character who wound up fighting some kind of monster at Graceland. His Southern character worshipped Elvis, and when he got to meet the King, he loved every minute.

Then Elvis said, "I'll be right back. Gotta take a dump."

And Rob, in his most earnest voice, screamed, "NO! ELVIS! DON'T!"

"Whatssa matter?" I said in my finest Elvis drawl. "It's jussa dump."

I cracked up just typing this.

Good God! Those were fun times. I have a stack of our dead investigators that is impressively thick. Many of them died when I ran The Mask of Nyarlathotep because I allowed the players as many investigators as they wanted. They chose an army. I knew the death count would be high, and it was. Very much so. The investigators won, but at what cost?

It's been a while since I gamed with anyone. Sadly I've fallen out of love with it, but maybe someday.

Maybe someday.

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 . . .