A BATMAN VILLAIN
(Tune of "An English Teacher" from Bye Bye Birdie)
Getting fired as a teacher was the best thing I could do
now I'm finally free to do
what I wanted to
finally,
finally,
muahahahaha!!
I remember when I told you
you should trust me for a year
it would just be for a year
but it's eight years, baby
Eight long years!
It was only a sideline, that's what I said
Only stealing equipment, that's what I said
I was going to the city and get ahead
instead of being a science-teaching bum
I was going to Gotham city…and become
A batman villain!
A batman villain, a batman villain
if only I'd been a batman villain
I'd dress in sick shades of purple and green
I steal you oodles of diamonds
just to admire the gleam
A man who's got a henchman
is really someone
how cruel I'd be if I only had one!
It would have been such a wonderful life
You could have been Mrs. Devious
Mrs. Dr. Devious
Mrs. "I'll kill the Dark Knight" Devious
the Batman Villain's wife!
Selzer, Adam
I KISSED A ZOMBIE, AND I LIKED IT
Ever since the post-humans (werewolves, vampires and zombies) revealed themselves to humans, high school for Alley has been a real drag. The guys are now all goth, and the girls are necrosexual, obsessed with vampires. Alley can't bear the post-human crowd; she doesn't understand why all the girls in school find it so dreamy to have a guy who's "crazy strong, but not strong enough to stay away from her." Then Alley falls for the fabulous musician Doug. Doug's a little pale, like all the goths in school, and maybe he smells a little funny, but she adores him and his killer taste in music. When Doug turns out to be a zombie, Alley has to overcome her prejudices to be with the man of her dreams. Simultaneously a scathing parody of the paranormal-romance genre and a sweetly romantic paranormal love story in its own right, Alley and Doug's courtship will even appeal to Twilight fans-at least, to those Twilight fans with a sense of humor about the object of their affections. Hilarious. (Fantasy. 12-14)
-Ran my last scheduled Weird Chicago tour last night. Starting a regular day job tomorrow, and focusing on tours for school/library type groups from now on.
-A couple of days ago I was interviewed for a public TV segment on The Fool Killer, the wreck of an 1840s submarine (or someone's attempt at a submarine, anyway) that was found in the Chicago River in 1915. I am probably the closest thing there is to an expert on the thing. It'll be on Chicago Tonight this week.
-I am going to be an Uncle!
-I bought an electric scooter - a Razor e325. I thought it would be a fun way to commute to the office. It only gets a top speed of maybe 10-15mph and doesn't handle hills well at ALL, but it's fun to play with. THis morning, having gotten up two hours before the cafe was going to open, I rode it to the office and back. Took about 10 minutes to get there on it, and 15 to get back (since it was lower on juice). If I take back roads, there are only a couple of traffic lights on the one mile trip. A bike would probably get me there faster, really, but I love the idea of scooting to work, with my cape fluttering in the breeze behind me.
- Oh, yeah! The cape! Some of you who've known me a while might remember my old greatcoat - the long black one with the shoulder cape. The vaguely Dickensian one. I'm bringing it back. Not that same exact one - I bought a nice, long winter coat this year, and hired someone on Etsy to make an elbow length coat that'll look like it belongs on the thing.
- Speaking of Dickens, I finished my re-read of Great Expectations last week. It MAY be my favorite book - the first half of it, especially, is just awesome. It's spooky, mysterious, hilarious and thought-provoking. The last third of it, though, sort of belongs to its time. I imagine Victorians, melodramatic as they were, probably really wanted to know who Estella's parents were. I think it was a waste of time. After Expectations, I read the new Georgia Nicolson book, then Anne of Green Gables, now I'm FINALLY getting around to Martin Chuzzlewit, which I'm enjoying (especially the scenes at Todger's).
Off to work tomorrow!
This is MUCH nicer than when they say I'm filthy and vulgar.
Current songs include:
I THOUGHT SHE WAS A GOTH (Vixy Dockrey)
ST JAMES INFIRMARY ZOMBIE SLUSHEE BLUES
THE RADIO IS HAUNTED
I GET A KICK OUT OF YOU
SO, in other words, I need more songs that I'm not singing! I could record plenty more songs myself that go along with the book, but better singers would be a real plus!
In other news:
No, I don't really do NaNoWriMo. I generally write 2-4 books per year, and November never seems to line up with my schedule. I've done books in a month, though. The draft for "Zombie" was done in two weeks! Good luck to all those participating this year, though!
It seems like every Halloween, some blowhard comes around saying that it's a Satanic holiday. They come up with all these stories that Trick or Treating had its origins as a Druidic custom where people would go door to door collecting virgins to sacrifice, and that putting a jack o lantern in your window meant that you had sacrificed someone.
The truth is that we frankly don't know a THING about what the Druids actually did. They might have carved faces in pumpkins or turnips, but people have probably been doing that as long as there have been sharp tools. However, we do know that just about every ancient culture had some sort of festival to honor the dead, and some of their old customs likely survived in the form of superstitions well beyond the middle ages.
But around the time that people were moving to America, most of those old customs were actually starting to either die out or get mixed up with all of the riotous celebrating of Guy Fawkes day in England. October 31st was still a big day for parties, but by 1800, most people had forgotten that it had anything to do with ghosts or witches. It wasn't until the big occult boom of the victorian era that people got back to talking about Halloween as a night when weird stuff could happen.
Still, by the 1930s, the old Guy Fawkes celebrations had gradually morphed into American customs and turned Halloween into a regular holiday for vandals. While barn dances with apple bobbing were common for the good kids, it had become the traditional night for rowdy kids to run around soaping up windows, overturning garbage cans, destroying mailboxes and setting fire to stuff. And here's the true origin of trick or treating: it was invented by school boards as a means of keeping kids out of trouble. Sure, it RESEMBLED old European customs where people went around trading blessings for cakes, but trick or treating isn't much more of a continuation of the custom than going door to door selling wallpaper is.
In 1938, my hometown of Des Moines had 550 cases of vandalism reported on Halloween, and the school board struck back by taking up the idea of trick or treating - with one peculiar variation: kids weren't supposed to get free candy for nothing, like a bunch of commies -- they had to EARN the right to say "trick or treat" by telling a joke, doing a stunt, or singing a song first. And, strangely enough, this custom has survived in Des Moines. Before you say "trick or treat," you have to tell a joke - something along the lines of "why did the man put his car in the oven? Because he wanted a hot rod!" Apparently it worked - in just two years, the number of vandalism cases on halloween dropped by 50%
Growing up, I had no idea whatsoever that joke-telling was a local custom. When I moved to Atlanta and kids just came up to the door and said "Trick or Treat" without telling a joke, I thought "what are these kids? Savages?"
So I'm waiting for the day when some local nut in Iowa comes up to the school board and demands that trick or treating be banned. Perhaps they'll say that telling jokes descends from an ancient Celtic custom in which peasants would tell jokes to gain favor with the devil. It'll be hilarious. Funnier, at the very least, than 90% of the jokes told on Halloween in Des Moines. Here's my current favorite: what did batman say to robin before he got in the car? Give up? "Robin, get in the car."
Wocka, wocka, wocka.
Trick or treat?
THEN they asked if I'd like to come in on a day when the other guest would be Hulk Hogan. When someone asks you if you would like to meet Hulk Hogan, you say yes.
I knew I wouldn't be chatting with him or hanging out with him or anything, but I did some wiki-reading to get up to speed on all the various wrestling storylines since I stopped watching wrestling (circa 1988 - I totally lost track duing the edgy "attitude era" - i like my wrestling hilariously campy, thank you very much) (well, that and all the rednecks at my high school were SO into wrestling, and I avoided anything they liked). Getting up to speed turned out to be pretty easy. When you don't actually watch the fights, you can get the gist of any given wrestling storyline very quickly. It was fun to watch those matches from the 80s again - I remember the Hogan / Andrew feud very well. I watched Hulk Hogan's Rock n Wrestling every week, had the sticker album and the rubber "thumb wrestler" figure. I remember how furious I was when I Andre choked Hogan during the feud.
THere are some interesting parallels between the wresting business and the ghost hunting business. In both, the best way to get ahead is showmanship, not worrying one bit about the fact that you're faking most of the storyline. Wrestlers at least get to sort of have a "nudge nudge wink wink" vibe about it, though, while even ghost hunters who've given up on legitimate investigations in favor of crap that the network will be happier with are expected to stand their ground and insist that they're for real. My whole "act" has been to try to be serious about what I do, analyzing
Anyway, I got to the station VERY early, and Hogan walked in, accompanied by Jimmy Heart ("The Mouth of the South") a few minutes later, giving me a "hey bud" as he walked past. I sat in the green room and listened to him talking about the terrible couple of years he's had, with his son's car accident and his wife leaving him for a 19 year old and all. He talked about how life is all about riding peaks and valleys, learning lessons, and that all you can do stay positive and attract more positive things to you.
Now, guys, I had a really bad night the night before. Really bad. Didn't sleep, and didn't know where my life would be the next day. My days making a living as a book writer and ghost hunter may be winding down, and I find myself in a sort of "what the hell do I do now?" state. Never in my LIFE did I think that, on a bad day, I would find inspiration and comfort in the words of Hulk Hogan, but here we are. It was a surreal moment. It must be odd to be Hogan, going around inspiring surreal moments just by showing up.
Just before Hogan left, they brought me over for a quick "how ya doin'" and a photo.
Mancow then brought me in to talk about ghosts and the tours I run for a few seconds. It sounded good enough that he and the producer asked me to stay on and talk about some more stuff for the national show. The green room window actually looks out into the alley known as "the alley of death" where 100+ people fell to their death during a fire in 1903, so there was a built-in story for me to tell.
Went very well - as has usually been my experience with radio guys who can come off as conservative jerks on-air, he was really quite friendly in the studio.
Hogan noted that at Wreslemania III, they had 94,000 people crammed into the superdome. The next week, the pope had 80,000. I'll bet the pope would have topped 100k if he had body-slammed Andre the Giant.
I've missed it year after year, but no more of this. There shall be filk!
This article (complete with entertaining comments at the end!) goes into great detail. The story the woman tells is that her four year old picked out "How To Get Suspended and Influence People." She checked it out, took it home, and then realized it was "appalling," "disgusting," and quite a variety of unpleasant things. Now, if it was, in fact, grouped with the other books for four year olds, she might have had cause to politely request that the library move it to the nearby teen shelf (which is where most libraries keep it). But she went a bit further - she wants the book removed from the library altogether, and has complained to the mayor and city council.
Now, I don't believe her whole story about the four year old one bit - I'm SURE she went looking around for a kids book that seemed appropriately "appalling" to spearhead a broader push against the library with the eventual goal of removing all the books she finds "inappropriate." There are plenty of books with more swearing and more explicit references to sex out there, not to mention all the violent stuff.
But if I have to be the target for a group of jerks who want to push librarians and communities around, I'm happy to do it!
Already wrote up most my thoughts On Censorship some time ago.
The AP is spreading this around.
Now, my question is, since a 4 year old picked it up, did they have it mixed in with the picture books? Is this a library that has a separate teen section, but mixes the middle grade books in with the picture books? If it was on a shelf made to house the pre-K books, than it was in the wrong place, obviously. In any case, kudos to the librarian for sticking up for me!
Yesterday we watched a whole bunch of Scooby Doo episodes, today we'll ease into "Halloween is Grinch Night," "Witch's Night Out," etc. He seems to be over the "scared of everything" phase he went through over the summer.
Last night I drove out to St. Charles (a suburb I'd never exactly heard of) for a USBBY reception. I didn't realize that I had my own table with my name on it - most of the other authors had big decorations set up on their tables. I just emptied everything from my bag onto mine - a stack of business cards, some fliers about my school visits, advance copies of "I KISSED A ZOMBIE AND I LIKED IT" and "THE SMART ALECK'S GUIDE TO AMERICAN HISTORY" and a copy of "GREAT EXPECTATIONS," which I put out to see if anyone would think I wrote (nope - this crowd was pretty sharp).
It's always tough to do an event in the burbs that starts at 7:45, because you either have to go REALLY early or face rush hour traffic. I couldn't leave til Ronni got home to be with Aidan, so I left at 6 and spent about two hours getting out there (took less than an hour to get back, though). Got to hang out with Emily Ecton, Julie Durango and Cynthia Liu and Simone Elkeles - local authors that I always enjoy seeing. Being an author can be a lonely gig - you don't get too many chances to hang out with people who have the same job as you.
She was a sweet cat and got along with us right away, but she had some bad habits. She would beg to be petted, but would bite anyone who tried to do so. And she peed all over the place for months.
But little by little, she's calming down. She's finally broken out of the "peeing" habit, and she's slowly, slowly learning to ignore her biting instincts. She'll still bite you if you're not careful, but she's letting herself be petting MUCH more now, and she purrs frequently. When you start to pet her, she stands on her hind legs and sort of leans into it.
She still has a few annoying habits - as a young cat, she thinks it's great fun to pounce on feet in the bed, so we usually have to throw her out of the bedroom in the middle of the night. But she's improving there, too. We'll domesticate this girl yet!
There is a fairly good chance that this is all just related to my 15 year cough, which I can't really do anything about (hell, if I TRY, the insurance company will probably drop me - the person who signed me up for insurance told me, off the record, never to tell them about the cough, or they won't insure me) (this post will probably self destruct) (and yes, I sure as hell DO favor the public option).
Other than that, though, things are going well around here. The new manuscript is off to New York with my agent today. The movie went over well at the film festival.
And, above all things, I have discovered the joys of cucumber water.
On Sunday, Ronni and I walked down to Orange, a new brunch place in the neighborhood. It's a popular joint - we waited an hour to get in. The food wasn't very good (or maybe just not worth the price/wait), but they restaurant was in the interesting habit of serving glasses of water with a couple of cucumber slices. De-licious. It tastes impossibly fresh.
I didn't order the apple cider oatmeal, since I'm just not the kind of guy who goes around paying nine bucks for a bowl of oatmeal, but I made my own the other day. It's simple enough - oatmeal made with cider in place of water, some mulling spices, and dried fruit. Topped with a cider reduction, but the reduction got sort of lost in the overall dish.
With all my book work done (for the first time in YEARS, actually), I've occupied myself by making edits and revisions and new additions to Halloweenspecials.net, my website about Halloween cartoons. Saw a few good ones this year - most notably, I discovered a Canadian one from the late 70s called "The Devil and Daniel Mouse" that was just terrific. Just when I think I've seen them all, I always find another. I still need to watch and review "Bride of Boogedy" this week, and try to make my way through the 1986 version of The Canterville Ghost that Disney used to air as a Halloween special (it's fondly remembered by many who grew up watching it, but I guess you had to be there. I've found it fairly dull so far, if agreeably creepy).
Happy Rosh Hoshannah!
I wish I could pinpoint the exact first time I ever played MIKE TYSON'S PUNCH OUT. I remember renting it a couple of times as a kid (we didn't HAVE a nintendo, but we rented them occasionally), and playing it for hours on end my friend Brian's basement, where I would bonk my brains out on Nintendo occasionally. Not having a Nintendo didn't matter - in those days, Nintendo was not a hobby, it was a way of life. I think being a Nintendo fan in the 80s was probably similar to being a baseball fan in the 1950s.
Punch Out was one of those games that became part of our childhood mythology (at least in my town). I remember a lot of arguments with people about whether Doc, the trainer, was really Mike Tyson in disguise. I heard rumors that beating Soda Popinski was just about impossible. I had to just sort of imagine what a guy named Soda Popinski would look like. As an adult, I can see that each character was really just a raging ethnic stereotype, but they were 3-D, complicated characters to me then.
The new WII Punch Out uses all of the same characters from the NES version, plus a couple of guys from the Super Nintendo Version (which was a good game, but just didn't have that "mythic" vibe, y'know?) I'm amazed at just how faithful it is to the original, really - Von Kaiser does that same "grab your gut" block move, Piston Honda makes the same "I just ate expired salad dressing" face when you punch him in the chin, etc. Playing it now is like visiting an old friend - and letting him kick your ass for old time's sake.
…you have just seen President Obama tell you to take your studies seriously. To work hard. To be responsible. He says that for the country to succeed, YOU must work hard and meet your goals. And that you will need an education for ANY job.
Well, screw that, kids. I'm here to present you an alternative message. Slack off, buster.
What a snoozer, huh? Long speeches are boring, am I right? I thought they'd at least have him sitting in a library or something, but it was a cheap blue backdrop. SNORE!
The president listed a series of jobs for which you will need an education - teacher, lawyer, doctor, soldier. Did you hear "rock star" on that list? How about "basketball player?" "Radio talk show host?"
No! And do you know why? Because PLENTY of people making a living in those fields are complete idiots. THEY seem to get along okay, though, don't they?
The president DID say that you probably won't be any of those things. Thanks for the encouragement, pal!
The fact is, kids, you don't HAVE to be all that smart to succeed. Heck, walk up to any person on the street. Any person. Go ahead. Ask them if they can tell you who was president between Kennedy and Nixon. Believe me, you'll be SHOCKED at how many people can't tell you unless you give them a whole bunch of hints. Most of these people couldn't tell you the difference between George Washington and a washing machine. But look - THEY aren't homeless. Are they letting their country down? I doubt it!
What if you want to grow up to be a douchebag porch rat? That sounds like the life, doesn't it? Just sitting on your porch with a few other people, drunk off your ass, yelling and swearing and calling each other "bro" and pronouncing the f word as though it was an H and an implied W in it, maybe sparking up a joint? You know how much money or education you need to live like that? Not much, kids.
It's your RIGHT as an American to be just that stupid and lazy and worthless, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a fascist, pure and simple.
And another thing - asking for help IS a sign of weakness. You know what they say - "If you gotta ask, you'll never know." I think that's in the Bible or something. Maybe it's not. I don't care.
When the president asks what YOUR contribution will be, it's okay to say "nothing." Or, if you're feeling generous, offer to contribute a six pack.
As for me? I'll be contributing….freedom.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go scratch my butt and spit.
Thank you.
The world premiere is on Sunday, Sept 13th, as part of the Chicago International Reel Shorts Festival. 6:30 pm, 1104 S. Wabash in Chicago! Come one, come others!
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adamselzer- Adam Selzer
- www.adamselzer.com
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