GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #955: THE RUMP IS STILL IN TRUMP

I stand against every president we've ever had. But Trump has my special interest. I will stand against Trump for as long as I have breath. For as long as he's in the White House. For as long as he has a breath to utter his crazy and evil bullshit. --me, Goodnight, Fuckers #252

That quote is from a GF written near the end of January 2017, not too long after Trump took office the first time. I've been rereading some of these pieces to get a grip on Inauguration Day: Part Deux, as Trump takes back that office in much the same way Grover Cleveland reclaimed his. Like it or not, Trump sets presidential records. He's got more impeachments than any other president in history, and he's the first presidential felon. For example.

That first time, in 2017, I noted that Trump had the executive and legislative branches, and he almost had the judicial. That was the only thing standing in his way, that one tiny li'l check and balance. He lost Congress at the midterms, but he very shrewdly fixed that judicial problem he had last time. Now he has the whole fuckin' thing. All three branches. No checks and balances. He has, indeed, been given a mandate. I have my doubts about it being from God, but the American people sure seemed eager to give it to him. Trading politically is how politicians survive. It's how citizens make their peace with their electoral choices. And now, I'm flabbergasted if I can see how the American people decided that the economy is more important than people. Then again, this country was made for oligarchs from the start, not the people, so maybe I shouldn't be surprised in the Land of Property Over People. But a lot of folks ought to be ashamed of themselves. They think they're the good guys. When you're doing evil shit, you tend to know it and feel guilty about it, at least a little. When you think you're the good guys doing good deeds? The people trying to stop you, like me, are the evil ones in that scenario.

The fact that Trump is once more in the Oval Office is perverse to me. All the same, what would it be like if Kamala Harris had won? Everything would be kinder, but it wouldn't make much else of a difference. Two heads, one beast.

I don't vote. No, that does *not* mean I can't complain. I am voicing dissent over a system that does not work unless you are upper class. It doesn't work for anyone else. I will not willingly take part in a system that does not give a shit about me or anyone else below a certain salary level. It's a device designed to specifically never change from that primary directive.

"If voting is so inconsequential, why are politicians trying to take that right away from people?" I have to admit, I've thought about that a great deal. Sometimes it even tricks me into backing away from my values. For a couple of years there I'd even started believing the question was an important one, but it isn't. Voting is a good way to distract people, because those votes ultimately don't matter. The Electors decide who is president, and their choice is between two people our corporate overlords have already approved of.

Voting has a second purpose. The true owners of our country have ensured that the president will only ever be a Democrat or a Republican. There is actually only one party, as Gore Vidal tells us: The Property Party. Every four years, I believe our corporate overlords take note of who gets voted in and act accordingly. They floated Trump, the perfect American slob, as a possible dictator in 2016, and we went for it. If we'd reelected him, then hooray! Let's take these suckers for all they're worth. But we went with Biden.

And this time, we went with Trump again. "Oh, they like a dictator, do they?" the cigar-chomping assholes say while having their dicks sucked on their new pedo-island. "Let's give 'em a dictator."

America has chosen fascism, which isn't entirely surprising. Our system is irreparably broken. It works only as a machine to make the rich richer. And we'd better get used to it. Since no one is going to do anything, my advice is to get familiar with cannibalism.

I said something else in that GF I quoted, something about refreshing the tree of liberty, not with the blood of patriots, but of tyrants (the other part of the Jefferson quote that people forget). Voting certainly doesn't work. It only encourages our corporate overlords. So if someone's planning a Tea Party, now's the time.

[I just remembered the Tea Party, as in, the political party. Yeesh. I feel a little sick knowing that some of those swine are still around.]

Trump really is trying to remake America. He can't make it great again. He's nowhere near man enough to figure out how to do that. Please. Putin plays chess. I doubt Trump knows how to even play checkers. You mean to tell me that Trump, the guy who regularly sucks Putin's dick, is going to stop the most villainous dictator currently on the world stage? He couldn't even bluff Droopy Dog *without* the sheriff's badge. But he has a lot of important people backing him up, and he's not making America great again for everyone. America will only be good if you are white, born male (and you stayed that way), hetero and have lots of money. And don't worry about those pesky borders. There won't be any. Canada the 51st state? Taking Greenland and the Panama Canal back? Why stop there when Russia could be the 100th state (when we get around to it)? He's planning big, but he on his own is not a capable man. The capable people are backing the son of a bitch.

I think he intends to rule the world. How do you stand in the way of something like that without prodigious amounts of violence and bloodshed?

America has not been great for a very long time. Our country is in the twilight of its years as the Leader of the Free World (TM). It should be. We started our country with genocide, got it built and kept it moving through "the peculiar institution" and now we have to get rid of all the nonwhites, all the LGBTQ+ people, most of the women. We'll keep the white women. The white men need to reproduce, and it's frowned upon not to stick to one's own race. But if we could get rid of the white women, we would!

It occurs to me that, while these pricks are busy doing that garbage, that we'd be very vulnerable to attack. If the rest of the world ganged up on us, they might actually stand a chance, and that would be their moment to strike. This is, of course, science fiction. A parallel universe where they can all put aside all their differences and tackle the Big Bad together. See? No, that's obviously not *our* world. The Big Bad is the US of A. That's mirror world shit. Right? Someone do a goatee check on me.

When we (mostly McKinley and Theodore Rex) started worrying about our place in the world, just before the beginning of The American Century (please envision those words in an Indiana Jones swoop), we killed thousands of Filipinos (in their own country!) to have a foothold in Asia. How many thousands? No one knows for sure (possibly 200,000), but I suspect we were angry with Hitler for taking the Genocidal World Record from us, which we did, indeed, previously have. This genocide was so wanton that Mark Twain said, in response, that our flag for the Philippines should be an American flag with black stripes instead of white, and a skull and crossbones in the place of stars.

I suspect we may have a use for that flag, ourselves.

Some of you might be saying, "It's only four years. Then some other asshole is going to be in charge." Steve Bannon already floated the idea of getting rid of term limits for Trump. One of his underlings presents it in the House. And so it flies through Congress, which belongs to Trump, all the way up to his very own desk. What's he going to do, veto it? It'll be interesting to see if we actually have an election in 2028. If we do, I'll be surprised if it's a real one, as we very loosely define "real."

One last thing: you might find this amusing, especially when I accuse the 2016 election of being rigged. If you lose an election and don't accuse it of being rigged, did you even run for president? In case you've forgotten I did run for the White House that year as a book promotion, which is why I refer to not even voting for myself. Which book was I promoting? It wasn't Dong of Frankenstein, was it? Dear God, I think it was! It couldn't have been And Jesus Came Back, that was too late. It had to be Dong!

And I *didn't* win?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #627: EVEN THIS SHALL PASS AWAY

 

This is a little embarrassing for me, but here we go. When Christopher Lee died a few years ago, I declared it to be the end of an era for horror movies. What I didn't know at the time was that Ricou Browning was still alive.

That is no longer the case, and now it really *is* the end of an era for horror movies. If you don't know who he was, he was the last living actor to play a classic Universal monster. He was one of two actors playing the Gill-man from The Creature from the Black Lagoon trilogy. He was the guy who was in the suit for the underwater work. He passed away today at the age of 93.

That's a hell of a run. The gill-man was the last of the classic monsters, as the first movie was released in the 'Fifties, so it's not too shocking that he would have made it this long in life. But with his passing, it really is a new age of gods and monsters. Sadly this age is more known for studios and producers who make horror movies than the actors in them.

And the age after Lee's generation are looking kind of long in the, uh, fang. I don't imagine it will be very long before the horror monsters I grew up watching follow their predecessors. Robert Englund, Doug Bradley, Tony Todd, Brad Dourif, all the guys who played Jason and Michael Myers. It's a sobering thought because I really can't think of a newer generation with actors known primarily for their work in horror. But, as the Chuck Berry song goes, "Even this shall pass away," and when that happens it really will be the end of an era.

PS: Cocaine Bear is technically a Universal monster now. I don't see us getting many sequels, but still. That's worth knowing, I think.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #314: JAMES MARSTERS (AKA SPIKE FROM BUFFY AND ANGEL) AND WHY I NO LONGER GO TO COMICS CONVENTIONS

 All right, I kinda-sorta promised to talk about this during last night's GF column. I want to state first and foremost that what I'm about to say is in no way a bad reflection upon James Marsters. I like the guy, and I love seeing him in stuff, even when he was briefly in the remake of House on Haunted Hill as the cameraman who freaked out in the elevator that one time. Also, I'm not sober, but like I theorized last night, I'm sober enough. So there's that.

OK, so when I first started going to comic book conventions, they were still about comic books. I went to them specifically to meet the writers and illustrators of my favorite comics. And I did that. And I have so many comics signed by them. I wanted to get Steve Dillon for my copy of Preacher #1 (signed by Garth Ennis), but the only year he came to town, I got horribly sick and couldn't go. Fast forward a couple of years, and he died.

But even that first year, I saw pop culture icons. You know the staples. Lou Ferrigno. Peter Mayhew. Jeremy Bulloch. Etc. and so on. You could meet them for ten or fifteen bucks and get their autographs on glossy photos. Very affordable, no?

But there was a shift. I can't put my finger on when, why or how, but it happened. Soon you could meet even bigger stars for forty to fifty bucks, and the staples raised their prices to twenty. The next thing you know, Bruce Campbell and William Shatner and the likes started charging a hundred bucks for a "VIP experience."

Again, I have to say that I'm not picking on these guys. I love them and their great projects (even Splatt Attack, Mr. Shatner, sorry). But the VIP experience is bullshit. You shake hands, get a picture, and that's it. Done. Get out of the way for the next sucker who payed a shit-ton to meet a celebrity.

I'm a weird guy when it comes to writers and such. I don't get stage fright (which makes me part of the 1% of writers who don't because most of us are dedicated introverts). I don't get nervous when I meet celebrities. They're just people who have been in movies and TV, which is a job but more high profile. The only time I got kind of nervous was when I met Joe R. Lansdale when he was on his book tour for The Thicket. My hands got cold. It's an odd thing, I know. When I get nervous, my hands get cold no matter how hot and sweaty the rest of me might be. But he quickly set me at ease, and we had a nice conversation as he signed my books. (It helped that as he signed my copy of A Hacked-Up Holiday Massacre, I pointed out that my story follows his in that anthology edited by Shane McKenzie, and he said that he remembered me and enjoyed my contribution.)

Side note: The worst time my hands got cold was when I was on trial for DUI, and after more than a year of court dates they finally decided that this was the day I'd be found guilty or not guilty. They delayed the case until after lunch, and my hands were so cold I was out of my mind. When I went to the bathroom, the heat of my urine actually warmed my hands and made me feel much better. I was found not guilty.

I'm waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off track. In case you can't tell, I don't do comics conventions anymore because they're not about comic books. They're about pop culture. You want to meet Mark Millar? Good luck, chum. But here's some guy who played an Ewok once, and he's charging $90 for the pleasure of breathing the same air for five seconds.

That's an over simplification, but it is more or less true.

The moment came home to me when I was standing in line to meet James Marsters. I'm unabashedly a fan of Buffy and Angel. I love that shit. Marsters played the best character on both shows, Spike, the punk vampire who started out as deliciously evil but slowly became an amazing hero. (And I really loved the fact that in the early years, he wore a red shirt under his black trenchcoat, very much like Dracula's cape, which was black on the outside but red on the inside.)

This wasn't a moment of decision for me. This was just the moment when I recognized that there was a shift happening that I didn't like.

In front of me were these two young girls, twenty years of age, tops. They were talking with each other excitedly because they were about to meet Spike, whom they both loved a great deal. They both obviously had a crush on him and couldn't wait to merely say hi to him. They didn't even have something for him to sign. They stood there holding only their purses.

They were next. Someone else was up there talking with Marsters. The two girls were then approached by someone who probably represented the convention instead of Marsters. He broke the news to them that they would have to pay $40 for the privilege to meet James Marsters. They panicked and started asking this guy under what circumstances they could meet him. There were no others. They were absolutely heartbroken, and they walked away with tears in their eyes.

If this happened now, it would be a different story. I was a lot younger back then, so it never occurred to me to sacrifice my own want to meet Marsters. That's my failing, and I'm sick thinking about it. But if it happened now, now that I actually have money (taking into consideration, in this imaginary quandary that the 'rona doesn't exist), I would have absolutely given them the forty bucks to meet their hero.

But even in my ignorance, seeing them walk away broke my heart a bit, too.

I want to be absolutely clear at this point. James Marsters had no idea this was happening. He was talking with a fan at that moment and signing an autograph for her. He couldn't possibly know about this. He is not the bad guy. So I don't want to hear any comments to the contrary. You will be summarily ignored if you come at me with that shit.

I met Marsters, and he was very amiable, very personable. My favorite season of Buffy is the second, which is why I brought the DVD cover of that one for him to sign, and he started telling me some behind the scene stuff that maybe I shouldn't talk about here. It was a fun meeting, and he was genuinely exciting to meet. Some of these guys look like they were dragged to the con by their shirttails, but he was very happy to be there and meet fans. I almost guarantee that he would have forgotten the forty bucks for these two poor kids.

But that's when I started getting the idea that comics conventions were fucked. The next year was when they started doing the VIP bullshit. I almost checked out entirely, but I have a lot of wonderful (and perverted, possibly criminal) friends in Artists Alley. The last two or three years, I went to cons only so I could hang out with them.

But I stopped. Going to these things made me feel uncomfortable and out of place. So fuck it. I checked out. My AA (NOT ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS YOU ASS!) friends are still my friends outside of the show, so fuck it.

You know what I really miss? Dan Con. That was still about the comics, and many of my AA friends attended. I got to interview John Everson once there, which was pretty cool  He lives in Naperville, which is a hop-skip-jump from me in Elmhurst. But Dan Con is a thing of the past.

You want to know what's fucked? Near the end of my time at these cons, DC gave up. One of the (arguably) two biggest comics companies just stopped going there. They didn't even attend as Warner Bros. They were gone. And then Marvel stopped showing up as a company that makes comics. They were just there for the MCU.

Not that I cared in the long run. But that's a bad sign, don't you think?

So yeah. I'm done with that shit. Call me when the comics take center stage again.