Friends and Monsters

When Tom was a boy, he found a book in the children’s section of the library. It was called “My Friend the Monster”. It was about a little boy who lived in a village. The little boy was playing near the mountains and he met another little boy who was furry, with fangs and claws. They became friends.

His memories of the story were hazy. Were the boy and the monster boy really friends? He remembered wariness between the two. Was the boy afraid of the monster boy’s capacity for violence? Maybe the monster was just faster and stronger and would hurt the boy while playing, without meaning to. Did the boy feel an obligation to be the monster’s friend, out of a painful sympathy? Maybe the boy, like the Tom himself as a boy, would have preferred to just stay home and dream of a friend he could feel closer to, a friend he could be comfortable with. Other kids his age seemed to have such friends. But other kids his age didn’t seem to love innocence the way he did. Other kids seemed more prone to being in trouble.

At some point in the book, the villagers find out about the monster families living in the mountains and attack their dwelling places, setting fire to them and driving the monsters out. He vividly remembered the monster boy running down the mountain, smoke rising into the sky from the burning dwellings behind him, screaming at the boy, “LOOK AT WHAT THEY ARE DOING!” and maybe also that it was the boy’s fault. Now the boy had fear and guilt over ruining someone else’s life, someone he feared and wanted to avoid, but who he felt a responsibility to be friends with. And maybe it was because he didn’t really feel friendship, and his efforts were well-meaning but not genuine, were inadequate, that he had unwittingly brought catastrophe down on the monster boy and his whole family.

The monster resembled a boy that he had known, named Steven. He had not liked Steven. Steven was his age, 8 at the time. Steven resembled him to a degree, and was pushy and annoying, with an odd, froggy face. He remembered some incident at little league, where he had gotten so mad at Steven that he had grabbed a handful of Steven’s shoulder and squeezed, an action of rage and deliberate malice. He has no memory of what Steven had done to incite him, just a general sense of having been antagonized. The coach broke them up and yelled at him. He felt terrible about upsetting the coach, who was a very nice man with three unruly sons and a very loud wife, but he had wished he could have kept going, that they could have had a definitive fight, maybe to the death. He had wanted vindication. He had felt burned by the familiar righteous fury that he felt toward so many of his peers.

After that abortive season of little league baseball, he didn’t see Steven again for years. On the first day of high school, a day of matriculation where the boys would be shown around the halls and introduced to the faculty, he saw Steven again. His friend Jeff confirmed that it was the same boy from Little League and they said hi to him. This brought Steven into their new circle of friends, as they all had similar tastes in music and style of dress, but no one liked Steven there either, because he was still pushy and annoying. Jeff led the others in blaming Tom for Steven’s noisome presence, establishing on the timeline that it was Tom who had said hello to Steven in the first place on that first day of high school.

Tom and Steven still resembled one another to some degree. Both were skinny, similarly complected, and dressed in similar styles, but Steven still had that odd, froggy face. It wasn’t enough to distinguish them from one another though, and he was often mistaken for Steven by other students who didn’t really know either of them. True to form, Steven was well-known and widely disliked at school very quickly because of his obnoxious nature, and became a stigma for their group of friends, who all wished him gone as he moved from one to the other for brief alliances.

By the time they entered their second year of school, Tom's own mind had slipped into a state of delusion and dysfunction, every day a torment as he tried to find his place in some kind of world of humanity. Meanwhile, Steven was pushed out adrift by the currents of hostility that he always seemed to wade in. Their friend Jack once told Tom that Steven had a terrible drug problem. Tom didn’t even know where to get drugs and did not even smoke cigarettes. If he had ever been shown actual drugs, he would have been terrified, would probably have vomited on the spot. But then there was an issue over a term paper that Tom could not type, for his family only had a semi-functional typewriter that he could barely use, and he could not actually type at all. Steven had a computer and a word processor and offered to type it for him. Tom was terribly grateful. Of course, Steven did not actually type the paper, and gave no reason. Tom had to turn in a shoddy handwritten manuscript for an appropriately low grade. He remembers yelling at Steven in the hallway and making dark remarks in the classroom. Grabbing the shoulder all over again, in a way.

Sometime after, Steven left the school, having been implicated in a possibly intimate incident with another boy who also had to leave, due to hostility from the other students. Tom and his whole friend group, and the student body in general, all breathed a sigh of relief. And as Jeff liked to remind Tom, all of this had been his own fault, they could have had a perfectly even first two years of high school if he had not naively said hello to Steven on that first day. Tom only saw Steven once more after that, later that year at the mall near the school. He almost didn’t recognize him. Steven was clean-cut and wearing a nice, modest grey suit with a black tie, and was accompanied by a well dressed young man and woman about their age. They greeted each other, outwardly smiling. Tom told Steven that he looked good, and they exchanged pleasantries and well-wishes. He was glad to see Steven doing well with a new community. He told his friends about it. They were uninterested.

A few years later, after high-school, while he was in the Navy, he came home on leave and saw a notice in the newspaper that Steven had died. There were few details. He told his friends. This time they feigned disinterest, but he didn’t believe it. They speculated that suicide or an overdose seemed likely. Ben said, “Good”.

There was actually one other time that Tom saw Steven, and it was decades later. This occurred in a series of recurring dreams that took place in his Grandma’s house (Nana). The house, in this series of dreams, is run down and stripped bare inside, and his Grandma still lives in there, and they still go there to take care of her. In this dream, it was a black winter night and the outside was cold like stone. Tom, in a black wool peacoat, had snuck into his Grandma’s front door and was laying on a couch on the porch, trying to sleep in the cold, wondering if he’d be found, and if so, by whom, and would he be welcomed or driven out. And then for a moment, Steven was there, also looking for a place to be. It was just for a moment, and then Steven moved along.

Trump/Engoron

This trial will never end. Trump and Judge Engoron have found in one another their diametric opposites, their shadow selves. Each one sees in the other the exact person that they abhor and would not want to be. But one can not meet his Other and then ever be free of them. The moment that their eyes met in the courtroom, Trump and Engoron were bonded and sealed to one another. Theirs is a true marriage that will outlast the planet Earth.

Neither man will get what they want and neither man will give up their hopes. All trump wants is for the judge to praise him and throw the New York Attorney General into a penitentiary while calling her racist slurs. All Engoron wants is to never have to make a decision and to just walk out of the courtroom, to sit on the sidewalk outside, and to pretend he's a bullfrog and think about pastels. Neither thing can happen, so every second for these men is like how you and I feel when we wake up and remember that it's Monday and that we wrecked our car the night before.

As they face off against each other, each man has to confront the lacunae within his own character. Trump has to face up to how little he knows and how incapable he is. Engoron has to face his own self-doubt.

Engoron does not see himself as being worthy of authority. That is why he wears pink shirts with yellow ties and that is why he uses words like "beseech" when addressing trump's charlatan attorneys. Engoron has only gotten by in life by being a happy, smiley guy. A judge is supposed to command respect, but Engoron cringes at that thought as fearfully as a small child would recoil from a lunch bag full of scorpions.

These glaring holes in their souls are functions of their greed. Each man has succeeded thus far in life by leaning into these flaws. And now they are locked in a standoff from which neither can flinch, and from which no one can save either one of them; not from each other, and not from themselves. When the Earth is nothing but dust, these two men will remain in each other's embrace in some form or another, perhaps a stone of two colors, and they will float forever in space, because the time has already passed where either of them could’ve brought this to an end by acknowledging their own flaws and submitting to their roles and fates.

Humanity is not going to see 2025. This trial, this conflict, was what all of humanity was hinged upon. The true Chosen People are Donald Trump and Arthur Engoron, like Cain and Abel or Jacob and Esau, Jonas brothers, grapplers on whom God and Satan have placed their bets. And even God and Satan are going to be left without any sense of resolution. Because God cannot reach the hearts of either one of these men, while Satan can, but Satan never gets what he wants. God cannot convince Trump that He exists and God cannot convince Arthur Engoron that he deserves to be a judge and to act like a judge. Satan can get into peoples' hearts and minds, but in the end can never be satisfied with the fruits of his labor. All of humanity exists now in the Omega Point that is the Trump-Engoran conflict. The Book of Revelations is cancelled; those events will never happen. The Apocalypse has already begun and it will never end, because it is too stupid. We are all in Hell and God is here too, because all of humanity failed when we produced these two men.

Tilda Swinton: Memoria Review

HOLD ON TO YER BUTTS, THIS IS TILDA SWINTON UNLEASHED!!!!!!!!!

 Tilda Swinton produced this vanity project in which she plays a tedious twit, and the movie is also a tedious twit. If I had been involved in making this movie, I would have deleted most of its scenes. For the scenes I left in, I would have made the opposite choices.

If you've seen Get Out, you'll understand what I mean when I say that this movie is the Sunken Place, and that to watch it is to find yourself inexplicably stuck in a chair, in the darkness, as coherence and meaning fall away and you sink into an actual void.

The people who made this movie are my enemies, just as they are the enemies of story. They shrug at the notion of showing scenes or people that an audience could be interested in seeing. They are determined to waste the audience's time with still shots of rooms and of people sitting still. Hell-bent on it.

This is a waiting room of a movie, an interminably long red traffic light. This is standing in line behind a few people at the store and the cashier has left to do something, and minutes go by and just as she may never come back, this movie may never get to a point.

Tilda's Jessica's Tilda isn't the only tedious twit in the movie. Everyone she meets are also tedious twits. You would never want to meet these people and you would definitely never want to try to have a conversation with these people. They might want to make you listen to their boring band or tell you some boring poem. You would DEFINITELY never want to meet Jessica Tilda, because she is just going to interrupt what you are doing, stammer after a bit, and draw a line on the ground with her toe as she stares at you and slowly asks you a meaningless question that can not be answered.

Tilda Jessica wastes the time of everyone she meets in this movie, which is ok because none of them are doing anything interesting or useful. They are all dullards covered in lint or dirt. The irony is that by watching her waste everyone's time, she's actually wasting OUR time. There is a scene where she is stuck in a long line of traffic (as I mentioned above, I would have thrown out most of the scenes in this movie). She conveys boredom and frustration. But imagine how the audience feels by this point? This scene is an hour in, and the hour preceding it had even less momentum than this traffic jam.

It seems cruel to be tricked into watching someone sit in traffic. That's the least of the movie's crimes, though. I maintain that there is not a person that exists that wants to stare at a cramped parking lot of cars with their alarms going off for 45 seconds. But that is a scene in this movie, almost right at the beginning. I'm not speaking figuratively. That is an actual scene. It's not even the movie's only scene that is about a car alarm going off.

In fact, this movie starts with a ten minute segment of still images with doodles superimposed over them. Actual doodles. Actually ten minutes.

About an hour and a half in, Jesswinton goes to see a doctor with her mystery malady. Nothing about this doctor or her office would make you think she could help with an unusual problem. But what did surprise me was that when the Doctor made an offhand remark about religion, about a fourth of the audience laughed. Genuine laughter, not forced, as if they were watching Happy Gilmore. And when the conversation just naturally revolved around to Salvador Dali, as conversations with doctors always do, and Twilda suggested that Dali might have taken drugs, the audience erupted in a full-on belly laugh. I looked around in confusion before realizing that I was among freaks.

The plan for this movie is that it would only be shown in theaters, and that is wise, because no one could ever watch this via streaming. One could not possibly stick to watching this movie if they had any other activities within reach. It defies our interest. It defeats our good will.

Explain a Film Plot Badly

So, there's this guy, he's I guess maybe mid 40's? Brown hair. Pretty nice guy, he seems like. He has a wife who dresses pretty fancy. I mean he's kind of casual with maybe plaid shirts and dockers and a jacket, but she usually has her hair all done and a silk shirt and some jewelry... They're kind of a weird couple. Not weird people, I mean they're a weird match. He seems really normal, but she seems like an elegant lady in a soap opera, but I think she'd be the villain lady, a real femme fatale if you ask me. So, really different personalities with this couple. You kinda wonder how they got together. Seems to me like he kinda gets on her nerves. She's a little snippy with him.

So, I said that they weren't weird people but actually she is a little weird, you guys. When he's not around she goes into these daydreams where she's all horny... But she's such a cold person all the time, I mean she looks cold but she acts cold too, so if she's so horny, why doesn't she just warm up to her husband maybe? I guess it's really a look into marital dynamics is what this is, what with all the unsaid psychological stuff and interpersonal conflicts that really a good marriage counselor could help them with, with the body language and little remarks that the husband doesn't really like from her but he isn't an angry person, y'know what I mean? He's not much of an ARGUER, so when she says something that's a little rude to him, he usually just gives like a little annoyed look and maybe mumbles something back under his breath and goes to look around the house.

Oh, OK, the house is a whole other thing. They are moving into a house that they already own. It's in his family because his brother used to stay there. So now they are moving back into the house and that's like how I mean when I say that the guy will go wander around the house to look at nails that need hammering or creaky floorboards or whatever.

I'll tell you this much though, he should have looked harder for them nails because in this one part when he and some movers are moving a mattress, he cuts his hand on a nail that is sticking out of the wall. OWIE-ka-ZOWee it bleeds a LOT. Everyone is really worried. His daughter is like "Daddy, your HAND!" and he goes and bandages it up...

OKAY, that's another thing I forgot to talk about. He has this daughter. She's really good looking. She's about 18 or 19 probably... really cute. Now, this is the 80's, and in the 80's the hottest look a gal could have was nice teased hair, any color is fine, this girl's hair is brown just so you know, but any color looks good. But then you'd be wearing either a tank top and jeans, or maybe a white button down shirt with jeans, or a turtleneck sweater with jeans, but ALSO, a girl would wear a brown bomber jacket. It was a good look. Really 80's. Bomber jackets were really popular with high school kids in the 80's. So, you'd wanna live somewhere fairly cool to wear this outfit, and this movie is in either Canada or England, I'm not sure, but she is wearing this outfit is why I bring it up.

She is the GUY'S daughter but not his WIFE's daughter. His WIFE is her STEPmother. That's important, because you can tell that they don't get along too well. I think that, again, this relationship between the girl and her stepmother could benefit from a counselor. They could work out their different unspoken issues and they both might feel better about each other. I kinda wish more families would be more open to counselling, really.

So, after all the stuff I described, the story goes in some other directions that I didn't really expect. I don't want to give it all away but let's just say they find a puzzle box that's like a Rubik's Cube but fancier, like it's black and gold and bronze and stuff, and fellas, you wouldn't want to try to solve this one, because then some pretty spooky stuff happens.

Happy and Angry Post about my Hero David Lynch and I

It hasn't been an easy past couple of years so this post isn't pretty toward the end... Twin Peaks has been accepted by new generations and that has meant noobsplaining articles in my FB feed and FB TP groups with people making twee little TP images and I swear if I see another picture of black and white zig-zag socks or earrings I will just explode like on Scanners.... Why do these things bother me so much?

I don't know, but there is almost certainly some of that ol' "I liked it before it was cool" mentality at play, I admit it, but c'mon... 28 (NOT 25!) years later, I think I'm entitled to a little of that.  There's more to it though. As I've said to quizzical looks, David Lynch art is in my heart. My heartbeats are the pulses of David Lynch plot outlines. I have always, since Dune, felt like I was something that fell out of a David Lynch movie into this much more boring and hopeless world we live in, and when I watched his weird moviescapes, I felt like a fish that was put back into the water by gentle hands. So, I'm not trying to stake some claim for hipster style bragging rights, I am rather talking about something that I genuinely love and want others to be careful with.

I WANTED to find other Lynch fans, and sometimes I found people who at least knew his stuff, but I never ever found another actual FAN. Another person who found Lynch's scary and beautiful movies to actually be their home.

(Special mention to Levi and Thomas Ahern for our TP marathons in the misawa barracks. Jack Hope though for his funny description of Eraserhead back in 89 to me, and also to Jack, Dan Mejia, Larry Palmer, and Brian Kirke for letting me show them Blue Velvet. Eric Wade, I'm sorry that I took you to Wild at Heart, that was wrong of me. I've always felt bad about it. Chris Prewitt, you were my Donna Hayward. Jeff, remember watching the big reveal episode in your dorm room at UNL??? That was one of the best days of my life).

(Does it surprise anyone to know that Cody Grassman would insult David Lynch TO MY FACE? Now you know why Tales of Grassman exists).

There was a day, back in 96, when I was talking to a roommate of mine (not by choice, thanks military), kind of an arse, but a rare person back then who actually knew anything about Twin Peaks at all, and I said, "Twin Peaks will be back", and he said, "Dude, Twin Peaks will NEVER come back." Well, I knew that it would be, even if I had to bring it back myself. And there is one of the sorest spots over the past 2 years...

An idea that had long simmered was bubbling into coherence: I had a decent set of ideas for TP novels, prequel AND sequel. Star Wars or Star Trek expanded novel universe type novels, if you know what I mean. I had it. I just couldn't do it alone. I've always wanted a writing partner to help me get my random and chaotic ideas beaten into form, and I've approached many of my friends about collaborating, and none of them have wanted to do it. All these aspiring writers I know who don't write, and none of them have accepted my offer. But I specifically tried to recruit Jon Moore who I had thought was a kindred soul to help me put my TP ideas to paper and we would sell it to Lynch's company and become wealthy gadabouts, and he also balked. But, as you know, f*k Jon Moore.

I had such great ideas for the prequel. The teens would be Harry Truman, Jerry Horne, Hawk, and Hank Jennings, Slightly older teens would be Ben Horne, Ed Hurley and Norma, and James Hurley's mom Linda, working with Blackie at the Perfume counter at Horne's Department Store, young curious women in trouble finding their way to be exotic dancers at One-Eyed Jacks, the mysterious club owned by Elmon Horne, father of Ben, pitiless and cold as ice. Linda Hurley's dancer name? Anastasia Mysterie! Elmon's friend Andrew Packard would be there as would Andrew's admiring young sister Catherine, not yet hard and bitter, a young woman who thinks her big brother will always be there for her.

We'd see how Harry had dreams and plans to see the world, and how those dreams were destroyed. We'd see Harry's Father, the town sheriff, and how he tried so hard to set his son free but failed when his health failed him. Harry's father's best friend and fellow Bookhouse Boy Miles Lanterman (husband of the log lady), who dies in the woods when he witnesses an unholy fire and the spirit champion who rises to fight it, the spirit lumberjack from the lodge (jurgen prochnow) in FWWM hacking away relentlessly against the evil spirits in the lodge as the woods burned all around him.

How about the sequel? How about Cooper running the Twin Peaks Sherriff's Department by day and running One-Eyed Jack's by night from the shadows, using Hank Jennings as his proxy? How about Andy and Lucy's Daughter, blonde teen in pink Sandy as the Sheriff's Dept receptionist, the smartest girl in town who detects mysteries to be solved? Soon to be the first Bookhouse GIRL? Oh yes, I think so. Her boyfriend Jack, son of Bobby and Shelley?
How about Deputy James Hurley, Sheriff Cooper's right-hand man? James, always drawn to women in trouble, is married to Ronette Pulaski. You're goddam right he is. And Big Ed? WITH NORMA, NADINE CHOSE MIKE.

What about Johnny Horne, reacting to Ben's death at Doctor Hayward's hands by coming out of his autism, donning glasses and a suit and tie, and taking control of his father's business interests, with the help of his new half-sister Donna? Johnny marrying Lana, who is having an affair with Bobby Briggs and another with Dick Tremayne, Johnny's pick to run Horne's Dept Store and other commercial interests. Johnny is as cold and calculating as his grandfather was, and cultivates a friendship with James Hurley in part just to watch James' awkward encounters with Donna. Dale, in both sides of his life, sees Johnny as his main rival just as Harry saw Ben Horne as the biggest threat to justice in TP. Cooper uses James to keep tabs on Johnny, and James, who likes Johnny and wants to be a good moderating influence on him, plays along.

Johnny bought the Packard mill and has Bobby and Mike running it, and Johnny's wife Lana uses her affairs with Bobby and Dick to keep a tacit hand in Johnny's business.

As far as Harry, he is retired. He hunts and fishes, and disbanded the bookhouse boys in Dale's advice. Hawk, of course, with Major Briggs and Big Ed keeps the Bookhouse Boys secretly active, along with James Hurley. Hawk knows that Harry won't be able to delude himself for long and will be back and the Boys will be waiting with open arms. Because of some secrets that Cooper's wife Annie has shared with him, Hawk knows something is wrong with Cooper, and James thinks that's absurd, but he's starting to come around....

All the characters who seemed to be dead at the end of the series finale back in 90 are in fact dead. Sorry, Audrey. Don't stand in front of bombs. As far as the magical aspects, well, we have our known unknowns in the lodge, and maybe a certain Phantom from Inland Empire might have to show up too.

I've never shared that with anyone, and now my thoughts are yours to enjoy. I had all this for you guys. I had all of this for the WORLD. All I needed was a little help, and I asked for it, and it never f*cking came. Once the series was announced to return, I knew I had a short window to get something in writing and maybe David would like it and use from it, but I also knew, deep down, that left on my own, I would never share my ideas with anyone in business.

I had to get this off of my chest before I watched the new episodes. I bit Lu's head off this morning on FB for farting out spoilers, but you know what? I'm off my meds, and she shouldn't have tried to noobsplain. I won't have it!!!

I also know that there are little millennial shits who'd like to degrade my ideas, but guess what... I was a half-formed, unbalanced personality and disgrace to my betters before they were even born, As Richard Dreyfuss said to his enemies in Trigger Happy, "When it comes to not giving a f*ck... YOU guys are DABBLERS" Keep your weak sh*t to your damn selves, noobs.

This screed was not pretty but it is the most honest I've been in years. None of this probably answered why this stuff bothers me so much, this TP revival and its many vocal fans. All I can say is, TP is my exposed heart like in the Jesus paintings, and the internet has been poking it. F*ck you, Internet.


Signing off...

Trump v. Hillary

 Donald Trump is the ultimate Republican. He is the Republican in it's purest, loudest form. Everything he's been saying that has made people angry are the same things that FOX news has made their running themes for years, the same things that the GOP's most beloved and popular politicians have hinted around at and nudged us in the ribs about, that their talking heads have written their little books about, the EXACT same things that radio celebrities like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, Glenn Beck or Mark Levin have been saying all this time.Trump just says it out loud, and when he gets backlash, he repeats it and the media loves it and they repeat it 100 times for him.

Trump is a Right-Wing media machine, a half-man/half money cyborg from a dystopian future who has come back to our present to take over forever. Donald Trump is a celebrity. All the old fellas who've been toiling in politics all these years have been pretending to be celebrities and in their bubble they could imagine that it was true, but Trump is a real celebrity and none of them can compete with him at all. The people are baffled. They do not know what is happening. They are so confused that they thought they liked Ben Carson just because he tried to say crazier things than Donald. Well, I can wear Hanes just like Michael Jordan. It doesn't mean I'm Michael Jordan. Sorry, Carson.

Donald Trump is wealthy. The GOP LOVES the wealthy. They taught their constituents to love the wealthy. Do you think the GOP has ANYONE who can compete for the hearts and minds of their base against a wealthy hatemonger who they have SEEN ON THEIR FAVORITE SHOWS???? HELL. NO.

It is the time of Trump. Trump is going to get the nomination. There are people who thought he had no chance, but in fact it is the flabby little rascals that make up the rest of the GOP candidates who have no chance, because none of them have ever hosted a reality show and none of them ever made so much money that no one could fire them. Trump is what Giuliani wanted to be, what McCain wanted to be, what Perry wanted to be... The GOP has no one who can debate him and no one who can stand against him.

Would Donald Trump be good for America? HAHAHAHA NO. Every action he takes would end in disaster. And he would not care, and neither would all of the people who supported him. All the GOP's base needs to be happy is to get their own way, not to have success.

Hillary, on the other hand, is the modern day equivalent of Richard Nixon: an ebon shade, a doomed lost soul decades or centuries into an aimless quest that has taken her so far into the twisted woods that she hasn't seen the sun of reality since she was young. She and Bill are Hansel and Gretel, still searching in the woods, still trolling for witches, buying gingerbread house after gingerbread house and still feeling homeless. They are actual possession cases, possessed by demons of ambition that will not let them rest and not let them feel a second of happiness until they are dead, because of what they do not have (in this case the Presidency). You would not be safe in a room with the Clintons if you had one cookie and they had none. You would find yourself hounded by mysterious thugs for years until you lived in a utility closet in a service tunnel. Hillary has to live, and to live, she has to dedicate her every waking moment to seeking ultimate power. It is a story as old as Alberich the ringsmith, father of Hagen. One day Chelsea will redeem her sad, misunderstood monstrous parents' tragedy as Antigone tried to redeem Oedipus as she cradled his dying body in her arms. On that day we will all rejoice, but in the meantime we have in Bill and Hillary and their coterie a drama of epic proportions to watch unwind to its deadly, sorrowful conclusion, a tragic cycle that makes King Lear look like an episode of fcking Fraggle Rock.

We are in for a clash of monsters, Trump Vs. Clinton, and yes, there WILL be blood. Hug your loved ones and start growing your own vegetables, people. The meat is going to run out at the butchershop. Just remember, if we do all die young, we can still say we were in it for the lulz.

hers

Hulk issue explained.

One guy posted: "I don't think I've ever seen the Hulk take an injury like Red Hulk took today in AvX #8"

Another guy answered: "Aunt May back in Hulk 349. in She violated the gray Hulk with an adamantium bat and lube. Waay worse".

I wrote:

Yes, a CLASSIC issue. Described here for those who haven't read it:

IRRITABLE HULK #349, "To Rise, But Yet to Fall" is widely considered to be Roy Thomas's Swan Song, his final masterpiece as a writer for Marvel Comics before defecting to DC to write about the '40's in a Little Rascals WWII title. John Byrne admits that after reading this masterpiece he just stopped trying to write and just started phoning it in. Brian Michael Bendis reports that it was the first Marvel comic he'd ever read as a child, having received it as a get-well present from his uncle when he had the willies, and that it inspired him to paint himself green, which landed him in the hospital again a week later. Ralph Macchio, mistakenly thinking this issue was guest-written by Kirby, was this issue's most vocal critic, initially bombarding "Greenskin's Grab Bag" with a flood of angry denunciations. Upon learning the truth, he blamed Shooter.

Lavishly illustrated by Al Milgrom and Don Perlin with a killer Hembeck cover, this issue is a dizzying mix of beloved cowboys from Marvel's revered western canon, relevant 80's social commentary about the "partying students vs. the dean" conflicts which were arising all over the nation, and a loving ode to Mort Weisinger.

Jim Shooter explains that he "suggested" (cracking his knuckles) the story to Roy, who didn't want to do the story, stormed out of the Marvel offices, shoving his way past Danny Fingerfroth and Bob DeNatale and spent the next three days hopped up on Maxwell House, rampaging around NYC, spray-painting obscene Shooter-directed graphitti all over storefronts and people's townhouses (the story goes that when confronted by police, the sickly, 5"1 Thomas warned in his queroulous, cracked voice that they wouldn't like him when he was angry. Actually, they had never liked him to begin with). Roy was not tall enough to have ever been able to see Shooter's face, so his caricatures were all guesswork, and really just looked like Gabe Kaplan from "Welcome Back Kotter", who wondered aloud, "What did I ever do to him?" in an interview with Johnny Carson.

It was while cooling his heels in a 10 x 10 cell that Thomas had the inspriation to do a story. Demanding a pencil and a ream of paper, and given a crayon and an empty cereal box, RT set to work penning his masterpiece among the teeming denizens of the drunk tank. When finally bailed out by Jerry Bails, Roy stormed back to Marvel and threw the cereal box across Shooter's desk, sneering triumphantly at his victory. Looking at it, Shooter saw that it was the exact same story he had asked for, and accepted the submission. Thomas declared a victory. Shooter ate his lunch and called the Knicks to see if they were hiring.

So, onto the story. It begins poignantly with a chiarascuro splash of Bruce wandering the desert, looking for his keys. They had been stolen by the Abomination in the previous issue (IRRATIONAL HULK #348, THESE KEYS MY DESTINY). As he walks, he thinks of how MODOK actually looks really funny, and starts cracking up. When he can't stop laughing, his risible agitation awakens the beast within him, and he transforms into the Hulk, bellowing his rage to the elements, "HULK LAUGH!!!"

In the lonely desert, the Hulk is confronted by the cowboy Ghost Rider and the Rawhide Kid who are looking for directions. After a few pages of roughhousing, the Hulk agrees to lead them to the nearest town, Albuquerque, NM. Passing a nearby casino, they are attacked by the Hobgoblin, who has devised a brand new Adamantium Bat Glider, and wants to try it out in NM where there are more open spaces. If all went well, he was planning to take over the Albuquerque crime rackets.

Coincidentally, Aunt May and Anna Watson have come to Albuquerque to escape the NYC winter and play KENO, and they are walking into the casino just as the Goblin attacks the Hulk. Hulk smashes a mighty green fist right into the Hobgoblin's midsection, liquifying his insides instantly, but the bat glider flies off wildly without him, swooping down and scooping up Aunt May, who miraculously gets her feet into the stirrups just in time ("Oh, my stars!!!").

Of course, May is a quick study, but not quick enough to divert the bat glider from flying into a nearby store front. Reaching frantically for something to grab, she grabs a bottle of Pennzoil, and as the Glider bursts out of the store's side wall, she, the bat glider, and the bottle of Pennzoil smash directly into the Hulk's purple-garbed gluteous gammaximus.

All are unhurt, but Hulk now has an unsightly hole in his then 25-year old pair of purple pants and there's oil everywhere. The cowboys are no help, since all they have are chaps. Fortunately, Rick Jones pops up in his long hair and cowboy hat and plays guitar, soothing the savage beast that is Aunt May and the Hulk as well, lulling everyone into slumber as he and the two time-displaced cowboys close out the issue with a sweet rendition of "Happy Trails".