DEALER OF DEATH or, HE WHO SMELT IT by John Bruni

 “Dude. Pull my finger.” 

Todd looked at Pete who held out his index finger, waiting. Snot bubbled in his nostril, and his two front teeth were adult. He lacked many of his baby teeth, and those remaining looked like pieces of gravel. He smelled kind of like hotdog water. 

“No way, dude,” Todd said. 

“Come on. You know you want to.” 

“Fuck no. I’m not stupid.” 

“Come on! If you don’t, I’ll do it. And I’m gonna make it worse for you.” 

Todd weighed his options. Pete’s farts were notorious not just through third grade but throughout all the school. He also had a habit of farting on people. Judging by his general uncleanliness he probably didn’t wipe well. It was too possible that Todd would get some brown on him. 

“Fine.” 

Pete laughed so hard he snorted. “Go for it!” 

Todd sighed and gripped Pete’s greasy finger. He gave it a pull. Pete lifted his leg like a dog about to piss, and something ripped out of him. It sounded more powerful than a mere fart. At first Todd thought it was a joke, but the sound kept coming out of Pete. 

“Dude! Stop it!” 

Pete laughed, and the fart sounded like a jet taking off. It had a chemical reek to it, and Todd gagged. The back of his throat burned with bile, and he spat to clear it out. 

Pete strained, his face red, sweat popping out of his forehead, and the back of his jeans blew out, sending ripples of fire out behind him. It scorched the tree back there, sending flames dancing to the tippy top. 

The sound increased, and a gust of wind flared out with hurricane level winds. Birds caught in the vortex turned to jelly as their wings flailed like the arms of an inflatable dealership prop. 

Worry crossed Pete’s eyes. Brown fluid gushed out his ass and washed away the world behind him, drowning every living creature in sight. 

“Make it stop,” he whispered. “Please.” 

Todd couldn’t answer. His lungs couldn’t pull in enough breath to speak or even scream. His chest strained, and it felt like he was suffocating. His mucous membranes ripped, and his insides flopped out of his orifices like flags on a windy day. The pain overtook him, and he died before his organs were sucked out and away. 

Pete started to cry, and when he tried to cover his naked doom-spouting butt his hands exploded into flames, singeing them off to the wrists. He gaped at his cauterized stumps, hoping this was all one big dream. 

The earth behind him simmered with a heat wave mirage. The air rippled as fire spread across town, incinerating everything in its path. People and animals died screaming in the ever-growing conflagration. Swimming pools evaporated in seconds. Titanium melted. The ground collapsed in on itself, sending magma up to the surface. 

Pete could no longer make sound. His organs cooked inside his melting body. His eyes steamed away, and his body oozed in on itself. 

America perished under blood red clouds and puddles of lava. The rest of the world’s presidents, kings and leaders screamed in terror at their approaching deaths. The oceans died in clouds that blocked out the sun. Fire lit them to a bright orange that rolled across the face of the earth, killing anything unlucky enough to be alive. The crust of the planet was eaten by the magma that constantly flowed like pus on a teenager’s face. 

The seven angels with seven trumpets blew them before they, too, melted in the unholy fire that had consumed the earth and now consumed Heaven and Hell. God shrieked in horror. He thought He’d known it all, but He’d never seen his own death coming. 

A research team in Antarctica were the last humans on earth, and they’d gotten reports from all other nations as humanity perished in the fart death cloud. They had no loved ones to say goodbye to. They’d already died. They huddled together, clutching each other for comfort as Death closed the curtain on the human race. 

THE END 

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #685: 315

 It has been 315 days since my last drink. I think about that last drink sometimes, and I'm glad it was from my own personal aging barrel. I had a sneaking suspicion that it would be my last drink, so I made it count. And it was very, very good.

But it occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that I no longer have a preventative measure in my toolbox. Back in the day, whenever I started feeling sick, I would drink heavily as soon as humanly possible. If you catch a cold or the flu or things like that at just the right time with massive amounts of alcohol, you can save yourself from getting sick.

After 315 days without booze? I can no longer do that. If I start getting the sniffles, I could very well be fucked. I've gone many, many years of getting sick only once a year. I have a suspicion that I might start getting sick on a regular basis like the rest of you who chose not to go down the alcoholic's path.

I haven't gotten sick yet, but then again it hasn't been a full year yet. We shall see . . .

So we're going to take another break. I'm not burned out this time. This time, just like with the end of last year, I'm out of ideas for GF columns. Correction: I have one idea, but I want to save it for #700. Yes, it's the other one about Walter Bishop. It's pretty momentous, so it will be perfect for when I get to that one.

Last break I took was for a week. This time? I'm not sure. I'll just have to accumulate ideas again until I'm good to go. In the meantime, if you want to help me come up with ideas, be my guest. I'll talk about anything. Writing, reading, what it was like to live in a world where the internet wasn't a constant presence, how sexy I used to be, anything about Gramps I might not have covered, whatever. Let me know.

Goodnight for now, you glorious fuckers. Have a good Memorial Day. Don't die.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #684: SPECTREMAN

 

In my ever-ongoing quest to figure out the stuff I want to keep and the stuff I'm OK with never seeing again, I found what you see above. I'm pretty sure that's my childish handwriting on there from maybe when I was six or seven? If you can't see what it says, it's SPECTREMAN.

My cousin, Erik, and I loved Spectreman when we were kids. We were crazy about it, in fact. When we weren't pretending to be detectives or soldiers or what have you, we were pretending to be Spectreman and whatever monster he was fighting.

The problem was, the show came on when we were still in school, and that was back in the day where if you missed a TV show, you just missed it forever. Unless you lucked out on a rerun somewhere along the line. And TV shows didn't usually end up on VHS at the video store back then.

Although come to think of it, I might somewhere have a Betamax tape with some Spectreman episodes on it. My stepfather, for some reason unbeknownst to the world, was big into Betamax.

Anyway, my cousin and I would have Grandma record the audio for us when we were in school so we could listen to it later and let our imaginations run wild. Because that's the best we had unless we were home sick (or home "sick") from school and could actually watch it.

Yeah, Ultraman was cool, and we liked Ultraman, too, but he wasn't fucking Spectreman.

FREE BOOKS

 

OK, so I'm giving away some of my books. This is addressed to two kinds of people: my readers and anyone who has a book review website (or better yet, a print magazine you write for).

TO MY READERS: To the first ten people who buy a print copy of my new book, TRAIL OF BLOOD, I will send you a free signed copy of my previous book, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HIERONYMUS ALOYSIS ZIEGE. I have three copies of Trail that you can buy from me personally for $13 even, no additional shipping. Otherwise, you can buy it elsewhere and send me a copy of the receipt at tabardinnedgewoodent@yahoo.com. First come, first serve. Remember, this is for the first ten readers. US only. Sorry, everyone else.

TO REVIEWERS: I'm going on the honor system here. I'm not going to check up on you, so if you're going to lie to me, please make it a good one and at the very least leave a review for me on Amazon and Goodreads. But if you are a book reviewer, I have a few copies of Trail of Blood that were not up to snuff for me. Some copies have super small lettering and aren't very well spaced, and other copies have a couple of typos (which is particularly embarrassing because one of them is part of the back copy). Contact me here or on my social media or at the email above, and I'll send you a copy free of charge in exchange for an honest review. As stated above, US only. Sorry, everyone else.

Any questions? Let me know.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #683: A LOST ART

 You know, while I'm telling you how to live your lives, I thought I'd bring up something else. It's a lost art in this day and age, and I think I know why.

As previously stated, I speak with about 100 people a day, and they are all on the phone. Before I sold glass I worked in telecom for about 15 years. Add to that I'm 44 years old, which means I grew up talking to people on an actual phone. I mean, attached to a wire. With a handset. So I know a lot about phones.

So it irritates me to no end when people just can't fucking talk into the phone. It used to be easy because of the handset. You put this end to your ear to listen. You put this end to your mouth to speak. Simple. Easy. But now that phones are just flat pieces of plastic (and other stuff), there is this odd urge to let it hang down your face instead of at your mouth. I get it. I feel the urge to do that until I realize that if I do, I'm going to sound distant to whoever I'm talking to, if they can hear me at all. We still know enough to put the top of the phone to our ear, but for some reason we let the bottom half down to just under our jawlines while we talk into the air.

Can we please, for the love of God and all that is holy, learn as a civilization to talk INTO the phone again?

And another thing. When you're on a video call, look at the camera, not at the screen. You'll make a better impression on who you're talking to. Every time someone just looks at the screen, I get the urge to say, "My eyes are up HERE."

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #682: STOP MULTITASKING

 I talk to about 100 people a day, and almost all of them are miserable. And I have a pretty good idea as to why. On the surface it seems that they don't have their shit together, and that's a vague way of putting it. It seems to make sense, but the important question is: WHY is it that way?

Everyone feels the need to fucking multitask, and it's ruining their lives. They can't just do one thing at a time. They have to take on a multitude of tasks all at once or they don't feel like they're accomplishing anything. Looking back at a lot of my miseries, the ones due to me not having my shit together, I know I was in misery because I was trying to do too much at once.

I know, I know. We all have a limited amount of time in this life. And none of us knows how long that finite amount of time is. So we gotta rush, rush, rush, right? Nope. It's quality of life, not quantity. If I dropped dead tomorrow, yeah, I'd have a lot of shit that I didn't get to do, but at the same time? The shit I *did* do? It gave me a life of quality, and I'm good with that.

You don't need to multitask. Stop doing that. Whatever you're doing at the moment, FOCUS ON THAT AND NOTHING ELSE. You'll find the quality of your life improving drastically.

I hear you have a lot of important stuff to do. OK, so do we all. And again, there isn't enough time to do it all. So you have to accept right off the bat that you can't do it all. Stuff is going to be left undone. That's OK. Learn to prioritize. Find out what is most important to you, and do that thing. Focus on it and nothing else. Then on to the second most important thing, then the third, etc. The stuff you don't prioritize can always be done another day because it's just not as important as the other stuff.

There is one flaw in my philosophy. What if you have kids? Sorry, but you're kind of stuck with multitasking on that one. At least for the first 18 years of their lives. That goes for caregivers, too. If you don't multitask, you'll never get shit done. So yeah, you're stuck being miserable for a long time. But the rest of you? Stop multitasking. Prioritize. Focus. Learn these things, and your life will be better for it. So will mine because you're eventually going to need auto glass, and you might wind up talking to me. And when I ask you questions I need answers for, you won't be driving and talking at the same time. You'll have all the information you will need at your fingertips. And our phone conversation will go very smoothly and quickly, and we can move on with our days.

Yeah, OK, you got me. I'm being selfish, but how selfish is it if my advice really does help you?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #681: BOOK SNIFFING THE LANSDALES

 

I am an inveterate book sniffer. And you'd think that we'd have a technical term for that by now. I know I'm not the only one who finds comfort in putting one's nose into the middle of a book and taking a deep whiff. There seems to be some traction for the word "bibliosmia," but it's still not technically a word for what I love to do.

The older the book, the better the smell. There is just some kind of spice in those pages that is perfect for the ol' olfactories. But sometimes it's a newer book that will do the trick.

Like the one in the picture above. I just finished reading it last week, and while I carried it around in my backpack, it really classed up my joint. Usually my backpack smells of the cologne I accidentally spilled back there years ago, but while this book was in there, it smelled like fresh leather.

Thunderstorm puts out good quality books. I mean, physically. And this one by Joe R. Lansdale and his daughter Kasey is perfect. I kept sniffing the cover every time I held it. Sometimes at work, if it was a particularly bad day, I'd smell the book. Whenever I was getting ready to go somewhere, I'd take a whiff of my backpack because the fresh leather left its scent behind.

It's a shame that my backpack is back to its old self. It was good while it lasted.

Oh yeah, the book is pretty good, too. Writing-wise, I mean.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #680: NOT MEANT FOR MY EYES

Dad and Mom, prom night 1975

 So I've been looking through a lot of stuff, and if you follow me on social media you know that I've been finding a lot of my old toys. You'll also note that I found a bunch of pictures, and here are some more of them. I was born in 1978, so this was before I was even a twinkle in their eyes. I don't know who that shadow belongs to, but it looks kind of like Gramps.

But there were a few pictures that I'm certain were not meant for my eyes. You will not see most of those pictures. However, I thought this one was pretty funny.

By the time I entered the story Dad had put on quite a few pounds, but here he is shortly after his 17th birthday lifting weights in his room. It's kind of surprising because he never struck me as the sort of man who would lift weights. And then I turned the picture over and saw . . .

Ah jeez, Mom.

Hey, wait a minute. What were you doing in his room . . . ?

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #679: THE KEYS TO THE KINGDOM

 

So I found this last week or so while going through my things, trying to figure out what I want to save and what I'm OK with never seeing again. I thought, why not save this for a GF? And then I posted last night's column, and I realized tonight would be the perfect time for this.

If you can't tell what that is in the picture, it's a photocopied bundle of pages from a Writer's Market book. Once upon a time, around when Caesar crossed the Rubicon, I took a creative writing course in high school. I'm fairly certain it was the first year it had been offered, and it was supposed to be for seniors, but I took it as a sophomore.

Mr. Langner was the teacher, and he must have recognized something in me because I'm pretty sure he didn't take any of his other students aside like he did me. That bundle of pages above? He put that in my hand and told me that there are people in the world WHO ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY FROM WRITING. It was a real eye-opener for me. He even knew what I wanted to write, so he copied the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror section of the Writer's Market. The keys to the kingdom.

If you weren't writing back then, the Writer's Market was an annual book published by Writer's Digest. It contained places to send your work to. That was our version of the internet back then. So I pored over those pages and started submitting stories immediately.

Long story short, if you're looking for someone to blame for me, you might want to think about Mr. Langner. I probably would have found out eventually, but because of him I got a very early start and got the hope appropriately beaten out of me earlier in life and got me very familiar with rejection from the beginning.

More things a beginning writer needs to know. But that's all for tonight. Goodnight, fuckers, and good luck.

PS: If you want to know what is in those boxes, they are packed to the brim with reject letters. There are three boxes there, and that's not even all of the rejects I've gotten. I've gotten rejected by some of the best. One day I might go through those and look for the ones with personal notes. For nostalgia.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #678: BEGINNING WRITERS

 So my hetero life mate Rob Tannahill posted this recently on his blog. If you're starting out as a writer, it's probably great advice. In all honesty, I'm not familiar with Emily Harstone, but the things he says makes sense. I'm not really sure how a writer would start out now because when I started out, the world was a vastly different place. When I started submitting stories, I'd just graduated to using a computer to write. I'm just a few years separated from writers who typed their work with actual typewriters and kept carbon copies in case the work got lost in the mail. And if that happened? They would have to type up a new copy from the carbons, and if they're anything like me, they'd give in to the urge to do even more editing.

Ah yes. Mail. Note the lack of the "e." What we now call snail mail was the only way to submit stories back then. Unless you were Hunter S. Thompson with his mojo wire, of course. The internet was around back then but not for common people like me. I'm not old enough to have turned in a manuscript "over the transom," but you get the idea.

Anyway, the point is, Rob, having to start over from scratch due to many years of drug problems, probably knows what he's talking about more than I do at this point. He did, after all, get his first acceptance letter today. From someone whose name *isn't* John Bruni, I might add.

So congratulations to him. Incidentally, the people publishing him put me in my first anthology about a thousand years ago. So it's another thing we have in common. Keep an eye out.

If you read far enough down in his blog, you'll note that he calls me an "extreme horror sensation." If the rest of you looked at me like he did, I might not have to work a day job selling auto glass. I appreciate the kind words, but sensation is a bit off the mark, and while I've been known to write extreme horror, I think it's a very small part of my toolbox. If I have any advice to give to starting authors, it's usually after everyone else tells them to know their genre. That's when I add my two cents, which is, you don't have to pick a genre. Write whatever you want. Just be familiar with those who came before you. That's all. I've taken a lot of what Joe R. Lansdale does to heart. Not to say that I want to be Lansdale, it's just that I want to write whatever the hell I want to and not just stick to the same territory.

And I did give Rob that advice about keeping the blog. Practice is the most important thing a starting writer can do. Here's another thing Lansdale said once: you have a lot of shit in you. The only way to get that shit out of your system and start writing gold is to keep practicing.

And in my defense, the headline of the article I read said a giant turtle crawled out of the Chicago River. Having walked along the Chicago River almost every day for about four years (and being familiar with how toxic it looks even when it's not St. Patrick's Day), that translated in my head to "mutant." When I actually read the article, I saw it was a snapping turtle. Those things are supposed to be huge.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #677: 305

 It is 305 days since I last had a drink, and over the weekend I came the closest I've come yet to drinking again.

Diabetic neuropathy is a tricky son of a bitch. It means you lose feeling in your feet except, every once in a while, you get a sudden flare of pain. I haven't felt my feet in a few years except for that pain. It comes out of nowhere, and it takes your breath away, kind of like the second between getting kicked in the balls and then feeling the pain spread up through you. It feels like getting a railroad spike shoved into the sole of your foot for just a second and then goes away for a very long time. It's kind of like a bigger scale version of phantom limb pain. And I guess not a lot of you know what that's like, so imagine instead of the railroad spike you get a thick gauge needle instead. But the point is, the pain goes away almost as swiftly as it comes.

Except for Saturday night. I'd gone to sleep, and suddenly I woke up because of that pain. I cursed and tried to go back to sleep only to feel it again ten seconds later. Right in the heel of my good foot. And the motherfucker just wouldn't stop hammering away at me. It drove me up the fucking wall, especially when I saw that I'd only been asleep for an hour. I knew that sleep was probably out of the question going forward.

And then I remembered what I usually did when it comes to treating pain: BOOZE. I'd take down at least a fifth of whiskey, and the pain would be so distant I wouldn't care about it anymore. That's how I got through a lot of injuries from dental surgery to the time I walked a piece of my toe off (yes, the toe that I eventually lost, but not because of that moment).

Well. What liquor store would be open at this hour? I looked at the clock and realized that Corner Cottage was still open for another two hours. I could go there and get back and drink myself into a blissful pain-free sleep.

Then I looked at my calendar and saw the 302 written on that date and sighed. Nope. Can't do that. What can I do?

When I need to sleep, I take two sleeping pills. You're supposed to take one, but I have a high tolerance for drugs. So on Saturday I took four of 'em and sweated through the pain until Morpheus took me off to the Dreamlands.

And I stayed there until almost noon on Sunday. Not surprising, but it shocked me because I'm usually up--against my will--by seven at the latest.

So yeah, I lost a lot of time because of that, but hey! At least the pain was gone when I woke up.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #676: MOM

Mom and me at Cantigny, 1979

 

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and it occurred to me that I rarely talk about Mom during these GF columns. Gramps is usually the big star, so I thought what the hell?

Mom and I had a strained relationship near the end of her life. I was enraged by her choosing alcohol over just about everything in her life, completely blind to the same thing in myself. So we'll skip that part of the experience and stick with what I remember from when I was a kid.

Sometimes I wonder where I got the writing bug from. Reading? That's easy. Mom and Dad were both big time readers. My first word was "book." But writing? I think I might have gotten it from her. I don't know where she got it from. Maybe Gramps? He had the observation skills of an author, but as far as I know he never wrote a word he didn't have to.

Here is some of the first page of her account of my birth. I found it recently going through a lot of stuff. I knew about the typed up version, which I also recently found, but there is a notebook full of her experience with baby me. She also wrote on other subjects, but I don't think I've ever found a fiction piece by her. She spoke a few languages. French pretty well. Some German, too. And she loved to play the piano. She tried to teach me how to play when I was a kid, but it never took.

Mom's portrait of Dad from their prom night.

Her other great skill was illustration. She would spend hours just drawing, usually with a charcoal pen on heavy stock paper. She never did anything with it. I think it was just something she did just to make herself happy.

She was crazy about British royalty. I think she would have really enjoyed King Charles III's coronation, although I would have made fun of her for it. She was obsessed with Lady Di. Holy shit, I can't tell you how bad a day it was for her when Lady Di, uh, well, passed. She also liked drawing a lot of high class shit like you might read about in a Jane Austen novel.

And she looooooooooooooooooooved the Beatles. Contrary to popular belief, I am not named John for John Lennon. It's for Gramps. But my middle name *is* Paul because Paul McCartney was her favorite Beatle.

It could be worse. I have a cousin named Erik for Estrada. One of my brothers has Cornelius for a middle name because of the Planet of the Apes movies.

Anyway, Mom was a multitalented woman who got the short end of the stick when it came to life. But I'm not going to think about that kind of shit today. Happy belated Mother's Day.

Mom and me today

Eh, let's not end on a bummer of a picture. Here she is in 1975.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #675: ROAD HEAD

 I might be in the minority on this one, but I don't like the idea of road head. If you don't know what that is, and I know you're not all as filthy as I am, then that's when someone is driving a car and is getting head from the passenger.

I hear you now. Have you ever tried it? How can you say you don't like it if you haven't tried it?

People have been telling me that for years when it comes to food, and that kind of thought process is bullshit. I know with a moral certainty if I'm going to like eating something or not before I try it. Smell and appearance must line up with my idea of what is good. If either of those are off, I know I won't like it. I have always--ALWAYS--been right. I have never--NEVER--been wrong. Green eggs and ham sounds fucking atrocious. I would not eat them at a bar. I would not eat them near or far. And I know for a fact that if I did try green eggs and ham, I would be disgusted with it.

Having said that, I did try road head.

It sounds kind of sexy. Getting one's dick sucked while driving a car. There's the possibility of getting caught, which is thrilling.

But then it happened to me. I was driving with my girlfriend at the time, headed out of Chicago proper and out to the suburbs. We were on Congress Parkway before it turns into the Eisenhower. The speed limit there is 45, but I was going at around sixty because it wasn't rush hour.

She said, "Let me suck your dick." I said, "Sure." And then the troubles began.

She had to push my gut out of the way, which isn't very flattering. Then, because I'm tall, I had to maneuver around in my seat to give her access to my belt and zipper. It was a cramped position, and I could feel it taking its toll on my legs. Then she had to fish around until she got me out above the band of my boxers, but by then I realized this was not as fun as I thought. I couldn't get hard.

At that point I realized just how fast we were going, and I started to have visions of The World According to Garp. Holy shit! If I got into a car accident . . .

"Stop," I said.

"You're not into it, huh?" she said.

"No. Just stop."

She did. And ever since then, every time I've seen a road head scene in a movie (and it's usually a comedy), I think, what a waste of time. There's no way anyone's enjoying that.

Good luck getting to sleep with that horrible image in your head.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #674: FREE COMIC BOOK DAY STRIKES BACK

 You're probably used to my grumbling about how Free Comic Book Day is not all it's cracked up to be, and publishers can afford it to be that way because they don't foot the bill. Retailers do. But much to my surprise, this year's FCBD actually was very good. Here are my favorites.

This was unexpectedly good. I enjoyed the Animosity short in which animals, who now have sentience and want revenge against the humans, protect a human who cared for the animals in the past. The Darkness We Brought Back looks like an interesting concept. A haunted house where the only part that's left is the front door frame. On Halloween it leads to another place, which looks pretty cool. I'll have to check out the graphic novel when it comes out. If it comes out. This one was published by Seismic with Aftershock, and Aftershock declared bankruptcy not too long ago, so that might be up in the air.

I enjoy Jeff Lemire's work, so I was surprised to see Image released a teaser for his upcoming series. It starts out pretty simple--two boys daring a third to walk barefoot through a swarm of fishflies to get snacks from a convenience store--but it looks like it's going to go off in some batshit crazy directions, which is par for the course for Lemire.

This one was probably my favorite of the bunch. A trio of stoners in the 'Seventies go on all sorts of adventures, sometimes accompanied by Fat Freddy's cat. It felt pretty retro, and there's a reason for that. Looks like these strips were originally published in the 'Seventies as part of the underground Comix movement. Very good stuff. I really enjoyed it when they infiltrated a punk show in the 'Eighties.

So there we have it. Three solidly good books from FCBD. That gives me hope for next year, considering for the last few years I was lucky to get one OK book. Fingers crossed.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #673: KARLOFF VS PRICE

 Today was a shitty day, so I'm going to keep this one short. Thankfully in my Field Notes book where I keep GF ideas, I found this one guaranteed to be short.

I'm guessing this is a still from The Raven

Here's something I found out last week, and looking at the picture above you would think it's pretty obvious. Did you know that Vincent Price was taller than Boris Karloff?

That seems so weird to me. I always figured Price was at an average height, but he's a towering 6' 4"!!! I'm around six-two, so it surprised me to learn he's taller than me. Conversely, I've always thought Karloff was a towering man. Not just because of the Frankenstein movies. Looking at him in other films he looks like he would be tall. He was just 5' 11", which astonishes me.

It also means he was shorter than Bela Lugosi, who was 6' 1". Weird. I would have thought he was taller than Lugosi for sure.

If I'd found out that Christopher Lee was short, that would have destroyed my entire worldview. It would have changed everything. But no, he was definitely tall at 6' 5".

PS: I love Karloff, but this will always be my favorite part of Ed Wood: