GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #245: GROWING

Here is something I've never said to ANYONE before. It's not because it's a deep, dark secret. It's just because I've never really thought about it before. But it's true.


When I was a kid, I wanted to grow things. I mean, living things. My mom got me my first garden, and I royally fucked it up. There was supposed to be corn, tomato and something else. I don't remember. Guess what: I fucked it up. Maybe it was pumpkin. MAYBE.


Fast forward to when I was growing up with my grandparents. When I had an actual backyard instead of a few pots in the kitchen. I tried to grow shit again to no avail. Never mind that I hate veggies, fruits, etc. I wanted to grow something. To give something life.


And I failed at every turn.


Before I was ten I had a dozen gardens, and they all failed. I followed instructions to the T. Maybe I just didn't have enough love in my heart for this shit to grow. I don't know. But it never did.


Before I became a teenager I gave up. I never tried to grow anything ever again. I couldn't even make a Chia pet grow. Nothing botanical would grow under my brown thumb.


When I got my job as a conference operator, the person who got me my job gave me a fish as a cube decoration. Except my fish died in two weeks. So she gave me a plant, and I figured this thing would be dead in no time.


Surprise! It survived my 10 years as a conference operator/tech support dude. It only started dying when I lost that job. Then: I got my current job as a repair guy at a telecom company, and now it's thriving. I don't know how that happened. Maybe it's just because I was told a spider plant is nearly impossible to kill.


I certainly didn't grow it.


The last thing I tried to grow was a Venus fly trap. I was told that you could be a grade A fuck up, and you could still grow this fucking thing. Well, I guess not. This thing didn't even sprout.


The people who owned my place before me knew how to grow flowers so well that every year they bloom without prompting, and they've been doing that for decades. Hell, sometimes the atavistic nature of the land will grow a corn stalk without knowing any better.


But once. JUST ONCE. I'd like to grow something on my own.


This is the final GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS of the year. Tomorrow I will post my favorite GF of the year. Happy New Year's, everyone.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #244: AN UNCOMFORTABLE PLACE

Here's another dream for you. Some of you may remember that a few years back I suffered from an abscess in a very uncomfortable place: an inch away from my scrotum. Some might even recall that I wrote a story about it for MONDO BIZARRO, in which one of the characters has an abscess that leads to a fantasy world with monsters fighting each other.


I had a dream last night in which the abscess recurred. That's a horrible sensation. I remember very vividly the process of healing from that thing, and it was not good. It involved being perforated several times by a surgeon, a lot of squeezing and a gauze strip that hung out of my wound, draining all the poison out of me. Something I had to clean myself three times a day.


But in my dream I didn't have to worry too much about the abscess itself. No, it decided to evacuate itself by other means. And yes, the warring monsters from the other side needed to come through me in my dream. Instead of charging through the surgical slit in the fold of my thigh, they came out two other ways.


In my dream I woke up to a horrible grinding sensation in my asshole. I rushed to the ER, and they told me that the monsters were trying to emerge from my butt, but their wooden weapons kept getting shattered, sending grievous splinters into my anus, making it look like a playground of old. Meaning, it was lined with wood chips. I screamed as the doctors took care to extract every piece they could, covered with bloody shit, sometimes with horrible strands of goo connecting them to my butt.


But wait! There's more! As soon as the monsters knew they couldn't get through my abscess or asshole, they found another way out. I howled with pain as I watched my dick contort, spinning and whirring like Jim Carey in THE MASK. The head of my dick exploded as they tried to come through. They couldn't because their wooden weapons snapped against my dickhole. Now I had a glans made of apple sauce with grim crimson streaks through it like veins.


It was one of the most harrowing nightmares I've had in a while.


I don't usually use these Goodnight, Fuckers to sell something, but if you want to feel like your asshole has been shredded and salted, followed by the sensation of your dickhead exploding and being threaded through with splinters . . . well. Buy MONDO BIZARRO.


In the meantime I'm going to cry thinking about my nightmare pain.


One more Goodnight, Fuckers of the year. Tomorrow. On New Year's Eve I'll post my favorite of the year, and then I'll be going on sabbatical.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #243: AT LEAST YOU GOT TO MEET MICHAEL ROOKER

Last night I had a dream about something that could never have happened, but it felt so real. I was supposed to take photos for a family wedding. I'm not sure which side of my family because members from both sides were there, which is highly unlikely to happen. My dad was there, and so was my step-father. Never mind that neither of them are no longer with us. Even if they were still alive, there is no way they would have attended a social gathering like this together.


I got the weird impression that my step-father was marrying someone new, even though he died before my mom did. Soon that impression became, well, I guess as close to reality as you can get in a dream.


I was running around, trying to get shots of everyone having a good time. There was this one guy who kept prancing about with a stapler, slapping it down on people multiple times. He got me once, and it sucked. It probably sucked worse for him, since he'd stapled both of his eyes shut and was doing this at random. Blind. Still, he was laughing. It must have been fun for him.


And then it happened. I saw that we had a celebrity in our midst. None other than Michael Rooker was partying with us, absolutely hammered out of his mind. He looked exactly like this, but he smiled a lot more:

Then came the big moment. My step-father was to kiss his new bride. I got in there as close as possible to capture the moment, and just as I snapped the picture Michael Rooker got in front of them. Not purposefully. It was an accident. The moment passed, and my step-father glared up at him. Only then did Rooker realize what he'd done.


"I'm sorry, man. I didn't see you there. Let me back up so you can have your moment."


My step-father grimaced. "Fuck you, Michael Rooker."


Rooker got a laugh out of that. When he realized how hopeless the situation was, he threw back both arms in a look-what-we-have-here motion. Grinning, he said, "Hey, man. At least you got to meet Michael Rooker."


Everyone cheered, and my step-father closed his eyes, willing the world to disappear. Rooker tapped him jovially on the chest a few times, laughing, but my step-father wouldn't respond. I've never seen him look more defeated in my entire life.


And then I woke up.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #242: TIME COMES AROUND

No offense to any of the other local comic book shops, but my go-to place is Unicorn in Villa Park. I've been going there for ages, back when I was a kid getting G.I. Joe and Transformers books and then again when I discovered Evil Ernie, Preacher and Hitman. I thought I knew the place pretty well, but every once in a while I get a surprise out of the place.

I live across the street in Elmhurst from the Prairie Path. It used to be a railroad (which, from what I understand, my grandfather worked on when he was a kid), but all that remains is a gravel path and a few abandoned train stations. One of them is the old Elmhurst station which is by the water fountain on York. It's boarded up, but it's still an attraction, especially on warm summer nights when the kids are dipping their hands in the fountain and young lovers cast their penny wishes into the gushing waters. The cobwebs shine in the eaves, highlighted by the ever-changing colors from the fountain, ancient life lurking in the forgotten corners of a monument from the not-so-distant past.

Keep moving west and you'll reach the Villa Park station, which is a bit more of an attraction. They turned it into a museum, and it's actually pretty cool to look around inside. I once went in with a friend, and we saw a bunch of old York High yearbooks from the 'Seventies. I found my dad in one of them, and in the very same book she found her uncle. Small world.

There is a parking lot there, and across from it is an attorney's office. I believe that it used to be the site of a general store in the pioneer days of Villa Park. It's now owned by the brother of my comics guy, who has his shop next door.

I was in there a couple of weekends ago, and much to my delight there was a fellow customer in there--a first time customer, no less--looking for the greatest Punisher stories of all time. Naturally my guy led him to the Garth Ennis MAX series, which contains the most adult, violent, vicious, hardstories in the Punisher's history. And then my guy, who knows my taste very well, asked me for my opinion to bolster this customer's confidence, and I delivered in spades. Good luck getting me to shut up about a comics series I love once I get started.

And then the conversation took an odd turn. My guy, and I don't know how comfortable he'd be having his name mentioned here, so I'll keep calling him "my guy," then confided to us that he'd bought his first comic book in this very establishment. I was shocked because I thought he was the first and only owner of Unicorn. Well, he is. Was this place a comic book shop before? Because that seemed highly unlikely. There wasn't a direct market when he was a kid.

And then came his magical answer, one that people my age and younger will never get to experience in our lives. Maybe you're familiar with smoke shops. They didn't just sell tobacco products. They sold everything, even books and such. And every single one of them had at least one comic book rack where you could meet the superheroes of old for the first time, and maybe some of the pulp stars that came before them like Doc Savage, the Shadow, etc.

My guy pointed to the corner by the door, where now he has a row of Marvel comics, and said that there was a spinner rack over there, and that's where he picked up the book. Both me and the customer looked reverently into that corner, trying to imagine a time gone by. Trying to imagine my guy as a kid buying the very thing that would send him down the path to his life's passion.

Time comes around. The shop that you buy your first passion could very well become your shop someday, where you will sell the next generation's first passion. The circle of time continues.

There are no more smoke shops. While time moves on, the past is never far behind. All it takes is a photograph. A film. A memory. It comes back alive if only for a moment in the imagination.

This time will never come again, but it is never too far behind that you can't remember it and possibly pass it on.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #241: THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST

When I was a kid, and I mean a teeny-tiny kid, my family was fairly well off. Upper middle class in the early 'Eighties. I'd place us somewhere in the upper lower class now. I have a roof over my head, but it's slowly falling apart (every time it rains, I get nervous because my ceiling has a bunch of soft spots which I have covered with duct tape). My electrical system is breaking down. I can't afford to repair the broken garage door. I can't even fix the plumbing. But back then times were different. Back then we could actually have those awesome Christmas parties like you see only in movies these days. We would not have looked out of place at Kevin McCallister's house.


One of our traditions was for my grandfather to break out the projector and play films of Christmases past, when it was just him, Grandma, my mom and my aunt. Some of these 8 mm films were shot in Arizona, where they all lived for a while, but quite a few were shot around Chicago and then in Elmhurst, at the home we inhabited at the time. It was a grand place. Two stories, an attic, a basement and a backyard big enough to play baseball in. It was weird seeing my mom as a kid and teenager. Parents never grew up. They were born fully grown, and they had full dominion over their kids. The very idea that my grandfather wanted to keep track of these memories was kind of odd, too. He only ever kept track of Christmas. Never any other moments. That was left up to Grandma and a Kodiak camera. Or sometimes a Polaroid. Back then she smoked Golden Lights. She had a leather pouch for her cigarettes and her lighter. She hasn't smoked in decades, which makes this fact even crazier.


Christmas belonged to Gramps, though. He relished recording every moment with his video camera. This tradition continued with my arrival on the scene, as well as my cousin's birth. When Gramps showed those on this roll-down screen, it always fascinated us. That's footage of us when we didn't even know who we were! There was a kind of magic to that.


After that, Gramps, wearing his rainbow colored shirt that said, over and over, WORLD'S GREATEST GRANDPA, would screen a few other short films. We had PUSS-N-BOOTS and a couple of Three Stooges shorts. It was great. I remember laughing at each reel as if it was the first time I'd ever seen it.


About a decade or so ago, I was scrounging around in the basement when I uncovered not just the old reels of film, but also the projector. The screen was nowhere to be found, unfortunately, but we had a white wall and plenty of space to watch. First the ones of my mom and aunt in their childhood, whether under the hot Arizona sun or in the frosty wasteland of Chicago. Then out to the suburbs. To them growing up. To me and my cousin as children. Building snowmen. Unwrapping presents. It was a window in time.


And then the projector melted down the film, rendering the machine unusable. It was nice to get that one last look into a past that will be forgotten when I'm no longer here. When my cousin is no longer here.


I spent Christmas today with the few remaining. My cousin lives off in Colorado now, so it was Gramps, Grandma, my aunt and another cousin. No one recorded anything. But I remember talking with my grandfather, and I have a sneaking suspicion this is his last Christmas. He can't walk anymore. He's confined to the living room, where he spends his time watching TV and doing not much else. He no longer shaves or cuts his hair. And he's been like that so long that he no longer knows the layout of his own home. He's forgotten quite a lot. He still knows my name, but he's uncertain about a lot of other stuff.


Maybe someday I can figure out a way to clean out that burnt film, maybe replace the bulb, if they make 'em anymore. Maybe just put the old reels on DVD, or something. In my youth I was convinced that I was going to die at the age of 40. That's an article for another day. I've recently decided that I hope I can squeeze out at least another decade. Maybe two. But no more than that. Getting old sucks. I've seen it first hand. My grandfather will be 90 in a few weeks. I don't ever want to reach that age.


But I keep thinking back to the time of those 8 mm reels, and I miss it. That was before I had any brothers, meaning that was before my mom met the creature who--eh, forget it. I've gone on about that before. Suffice it to say, the John Bruni in those films was someone who had yet to get the shit kicked out of him by the world, and everyone around him was young and alive and full of hope.


To quote a great series of books, "O, Discordia!"

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #240: A MIRROR BRIGHTLY

Not too long ago I went to the Country House with a dear friend of mine. In case you don't know me very well, the Country House in Clarendon Hills is home to the greatest cheeseburger known to humanity. If you love cheeseburgers, then you need to go there immediately. I don't care if you're currently in Siberia. Make the pilgrimage. You'll love it.


At the end of our meal I went to the bathroom, mostly because I eat like a slob and needed to clean my fingers off. I happened to look up into the mirror, and I was kind of surprised by the face I saw. The lights in the bathroom are very bright, so I could see every wrinkle and gray hair on my head. I looked fucking old. That's the first time I noticed that. I've made comments about gray hair in my beard this year, but this is the first time I saw that I was no longer 19 years old.


There is one annoying gray hair near the top of my head. It pisses me off because every time I see it I think I've got something stuck in my hair. But the others? I don't mind them so much. From what I can tell, aside from that one irritating hair, I'm going to go gray like old-time Nick Fury. That suits me fine.


I'm OK with getting old, but not too old. That's a topic for another day. Maybe for my 40th birthday I'll write a piece on that. Which, by the way, isn't too far off. In 2017 I will be 39.


Only a handful of people I know will recognize that as familiar. I'll probably get deeper into it someday. But for now . . . goodnight, fuckers.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #239: WHAT IF . . . ?

A horrible thought occurred to me. What if we get to midnight at the end of New Year's Eve, and Keith Richards survives? And we're all like:

And then on January 1, 2017, he dies in the grimmest, most horrifying way. And 2017 is standing over the corpse with his weapons, grinning. Happy because he's the coldest motherfucker in history. "Sorry guys. I just wanted to set the tone. You're all fucked now."


Welcome to the end times. Sweet dreams, fuckers.