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.

NIC CAGE: 59

 It's been one year since you said, "Nic Cage can smooch!"

It's been nine years since you were Left Behind.

It's been twelve years since your last ghost ride.

It's been twelve years since you threatened to drink beer out of that dude's skull and then did it.

59, Big Daddy.

Remember, fourteen years ago, when you snorted heroin thinking it was cocaine?

Remember, sixteen years ago, when you graced the silver screen as Fu Manchu?

Remember, seventeen years ago, the horrible incident with the bees?

Remember, nineteen years ago, how you were our National Treasure?

59, Big Daddy.

Whether you're screaming about beating someone until they're pissing blood

or listening to Brian Cox tell you to avoid the deus ex machina

or sacrificing yourself for a Navajo windtalker

or simply bringing out the dead

it's 59, Big Daddy.

From snuff films

to angels

to Alcatraz

to being a Secret Service agent,

Whether you're leaving Las Vegas or honeymooning there,

or whether you're hanging in Red Rock West

or you're busy raising Arizona,

Please stay wild at heart.

It's been fifty-nine years since your debut on earth.

Happy birthday, Nic Cage!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #590: I JUST DON'T GET IT

 So I watched this a few weeks ago and enjoyed it a great deal. It's an interview between Brendan Fraser and Adam Sandler. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I can't stand Adam Sandler movies. However, I like Fraser a lot more than I can't stand Sandler, so I watched it. You might get a kick out of it, too.

I just don't get Sandler's appeal. What is it about him that makes you all like his movies? I tried. I really did. There is just something about him that rubs me the wrong way that no one else seems to notice. I can tolerate Little Nicky. The movie, not the character. The character is really super annoying. I only ever liked one Sandler movie, and that was Funny People. He was great in that. But everything else? I'm baffled.

I didn't even like him on SNL. How the hell did anyone think Opera Man was funny? A piece of my soul dies every time I hear him do this. His songs are OK. A few of them are even funny in their vulgarity. But I wouldn't listen to them more than once.

Yeah, Airheads was cool, but that's not an Adam Sandler movie. He's just in it. I can take it if he's just a supporting character, but if the movie wouldn't exist without him being there? That's a different story.

I know, I know. You're all disagreeing with me right now. And I accept that. Just you wait until I start talking about how I can't stand Friends and Seinfeld. Then you'll really get the pitchforks and torches and come after my ass. Guess I'll see you at the windmill . . .

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #589: PAIN NEVER GOES AWAY

 Pain has been on my mind a lot lately. Not only is there the constant pain of my bad left foot, but now I'm discovering the pain of getting old. I thought I already had, but it's on a new level now.

And this pain doesn't go away.

Drinking always took the pain away. As good as quitting booze has been for me, I sometimes curse the day that I stopped drinking. If I had some whiskey right now, I wouldn't be thinking about this fucking pain. I wouldn't feel it, or at least it would be so far away that it wouldn't be worth noticing.

All my joints are fucked. My right knee wants to complain every time I move the fucking thing. My tennis elbow is still killing me. My wrists are constantly bitching at me, and only one of them has any reason to. (I'm looking at you, Leftie. Jerking off didn't take too long today. What gives?) And now it feels like two of my fingers on my right hand are dislocated. I know they're not, but neither of them feel connected at the mid knuckle. Every time I flex them I feel them pop like they're almost about to get back into place but never do.

The only way I can stand is by groaning and cursing. When I stand at work, I keep my mouth shut, but I hobble for the first few steps.

Getting old sucks. 0/10. Would not recommend.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #588: WHILE I'M THINKING ABOUT BOOZE . . .

 . . . I feel like I should remind you that my job's Christmas party of 2021 was so lame I didn't even go. I'm used to crazy parties with free booze and food, and I didn't feel like driving out to the middle of nowhere to pay for my own drinks and food. I skipped it. This year it went differently. They had it in the office for maybe a half an hour before we had to go back to work. I kinda just went in for the toast and then went back to work right away. No time for love, Dr. Jones.

There wasn't any real booze, but they did have some champagne, and you could have one even if you were still working. They offered me some, and I almost took it out of habit. Then I remembered, oh wait, champagne has alcohol in it. Not much. Certainly not enough to make me feel it. In truth, if I was still drinking I probably wouldn't have taken it, anyway. Champagne really isn't worth the alcohol content in it. I mean, probably.

I caught myself at the last moment and held up my energy drink instead. It kind of surprised me how fast I almost lost my days. While there isn't much booze in champagne, it would have been enough to send me back to zero days. And who knows? Maybe it would have been the blasting cap to me getting a bottle of whiskey from Williams Liquors on the way home. When I fuck up, I tend to think, well, it's the same punishment no matter how badly I fucked up, so might as well fuck it up all the way to the hilt. Get my money's worth.

Maybe in an alternate universe I got drunk on New Year's Eve.

You probably should have read this GF while listening to this. Whoops.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #587: MEETING THE NEW YEAR HIGH

 So I've been laying off the cannabis for a reason. I've been keeping it on the down low, but I've been looking for a new job. Just because recreational cannabis is legal in IL doesn't mean that you can still test positive for it and get a job. That sucks, but that's the way it goes.

But I gave up on looking for a new job. I'm pretty sure I can make the one I have work out decently and still get an all right apartment if not in Elmhurst then at least close by. So I decided to get high as fuck to end 2022 and meet 2023. I went out to a friend's place, and we got high and watched a bunch of cool shit. Holy fuck, I was high. It was great. We went to sleep around 3-ish, and when I woke up the next day I was still pretty high. It was excellent.

I'm pretty sure I'm unable to find a new job because of my books. I've had amazing interviews where I knocked it out of the park. One interview even treated me like I was already hired. But then these jobs started ghosting me, which has never happened to me before. I can only assume they did the poor man's background check (ie. Google), and my books came up. Well, I can't put that genie back in the bottle, so fuck it. Let's see where I can go from here.

Although some of those jobs were pretty sweet. Some of them offered as much as $75K/year. That would have been awesome. Ah well.

This is all over the place. Not much cohesion. Perhaps I'm rustier at this than I thought. But here's something interesting that happened when I went to sleep in the wee hours of New Year's Day. For the first time in ages I had a booze dream. They don't happen often, but it happened pretty hardcore that night. Probably something psychological in regards to getting high after being sober for so long. But in the dream I was taking down shot after shot after shot, and it was great. And then I remembered, holy shit! I'm not supposed to be doing this! But then I thought, fuck it. Let's keep drinking. So I did until I woke up.

I could almost taste the whiskey.

Anyway, it's good to get high again. That's not going to be an every day thing going forward, but every once in a while. Like a treat to myself. I've been a good boy. Now for my edible.

I am not high right now. Perhaps I should be, considering how much rambling I've done here tonight.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #586: WARM UP

 OK, I assume I'm going to be kind of rusty at writing these things every night. I fell out of practice, but hopefully this will get the juices flowing. Welcome back! It's 2023, and against all odds I'm still alive. How about that?

I've got a few things to get off my chest as we get closer to the 600th GF column. I imagine I'll still be doing this after that milestone. I don't have any plans on stopping even though a lot of these recent columns had a readership that fell off drastically. If I wrote these for everyone else, I'd probably stop, but this is more like a journal. Sometimes it's shock value. Sometimes it's about writing advice. Maybe I'll do more of that. We'll see.

Anyway, if you have any recommendations for things you want me to cover, please let me know. For now I'll just do the usual bullshit. Tomorrow will have something more of an idea behind it than just me jabbering.

Or perhaps I'm jibber-jabbering. That's probably more likely. So I'll stop. Because we all know how Mr. T feels about that sort of thing.