Mr Eight Reviews Teen Wolf
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The State of the Pulp
Hello, and welcome to Monday.
I hope your weekend adventures went well – that whatever Nazis needed punching were thoroughly pummeled, that all ninja assaults were repelled, and that all giant robot attacks turned out to be misunderstandings resulting, eventually, in marshmallow roasts.
[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRnY-ZZcLEo]
We did record the latest FlashCast last night – unfortunately, however, due to a project glut in Skinner Co.’s Baby Tickling Department, Jessica May was pretty pooped, and the critical job of hacking out all of my jibber-jabber has yet to be completed.
As such, we’ll be posting FC23 tonight, and Mulligan will finish off The Family Legend tomorrow. I’ve some surprises ahead, so keep an eye out for the This Week posting, which the R&D folks should have in my hands shortly.
Sunday Summary: Nuclear Family Bombardment
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/79592461634240513
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/78839278238568448
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/78492771916324864
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/78482836482564096
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/77742790724960256
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/78110497089662976
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/78235058057641985
http://twitter.com/#!/JRDSkinner/status/78128209815810048
174 – Coffin: Once in a Blue Moon, Part 1 of 1
Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode one hundred and seventy-four.
Tonight we present, Coffin: Once in a Blue Moon, Part 1 of 1.
Download MP3(RSS / iTunes)
This week’s episodes are brought to you by Geek Out! with Mainframe.
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight’s scheduled presentation, Mulligan Smith and The Family Legend, has been postponed until Monday. We regret any inconvenience, heightened tension, or blood pressure increase, that this may cause. In its place, we offer up a not-so-shaggy dog story, as told by Will Coffin, urban shaman.
Flash Pulp 174 – Coffin: Once in a Blue Moon, Part 1 of 1
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
It was getting late – Bunny could tell, as the edges of her vision had started sprouting Chia Pet fuzz under the glazing of liquor she’d had time to drink.
“Maybe we oughtta pound bricks,” she said to Will.
Speaking was enough to throw her stability off wildly, and she found herself leaning heavily on the table for support.
“We’ll get you a glass of water first,” Coffin replied. With a hand-sign, he summoned the barkeep’s attention.
Dorset, prepared for the eventuality, made his way to their seats with a full cup, fresh from the tap, and a pair of Advil tablets.
Will nodded his thanks, and Bunny began to attempt to swallow the preventive medicine.
“When it gets to this point,” said Coffin, “you always sit there sipping like a bird. I just watched you nearly drown while consuming the better part of two large bottles of vodka, why does it take you so long to finish a tumbler of the most basic essential to human life?”
“It tastes weird,” she replied.
“Well, don’t rush anyhow, we’re waiting for someone.”
“It’s way past my bedtime.”
“If we were to head to the apartment right now, you’d just spend the next couple of hours watching TV anyway.”
“I gotta say g’night to Letterman. That cheeky #######.”
Coffin pulled back the sleeve of his leather jacket, exposing the watch underneath.
“Shouldn’t be long. I’ll tell you a bit of a story in the meantime.”
He cleared his throat, and she went on worrying at her beverage.
“Once there was a dog. Good, solid, family kind of dog. Little white mutt with curly hair and a love of napping on warm couches. One night, he’s following the ritual, waiting at the patio door after being out for the last time of the evening. Usually his master returns in five or ten minutes to let him back in, but this eve, unbeknownst to the canine, the human’s been sidetracked by a cable channel playing Bruce Lee’s Chinese Connection, and has fallen asleep in his La-Z-Boy.
“The pooch waits a while, but he starts to get a bit cold. He paces for warmth. Eventually, an hour in, he gets bored. It’s his first time loose this late, and there’s a whole range of nocturnal smells he has yet to experience.
“He wanders away from the deck, and under a broken board in the fence.
“At first he’s excited – a little dog in the big city after sunset. He’s trotting down the sidewalks, looking for someone to share his adventure with – or at least a trash can to raid – when he finds himself passing through a darkened park. He knows the place – the master’s kid takes him there sometimes when the boy is attempting to leverage his cuteness to talk to girls – but there’s something on the breeze that smells off to him.
“Suddenly, a naked man scrambles from the trees, running straight for him. Before the beast knows what’s happening, he’s been bitten on his right back-leg. Well, the mutt’s not interested in being some perverted homeless guy’s meal, so he bolts. Shaken, he retraces his steps home. His slightly panicked barking is enough to bring his master back to consciousness just at the film’s conclusion, and they both slink off to bed.”
“Fantastic,” said Bunny. “A story heartwarming enough to revive the ####ing Benji franchise, but I’m done my water – let’s go.”
Coffin ignored her.
“Things were fine for the next thirty days or so, but, while the four-legger was again outside dampening the rose bushes for the last time of the evening, he feels the old tooth-mark starting to itch. Then he realizes something is happening – it feels like the ground is falling away from him. He nearly throws up.
“Then he’s cold – and naked. He looks at himself, and he has two hands and two feet. He’s confused and scared – he can’t go back into his home, his Master will think he’s some nudist madman trying to burgle the place. He hops a few fences, and gets lucky: someone with a clothesline has left out a string of relatively-fitting laundry. Of course, he still needed somewhere to go, so he-”
Will paused as the door to the establishment swung open, and a sharp featured man with a head of curly white hair stepped in. The latecomer’s nostrils flared, tasting the odours of the room.
“Been a while,” said Coffin, raising his voice to cover the distance. Standing, he waved the new arrival to a nearby seat, and asked, “can I buy you a drink?”
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.
– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.
From The Gutter To The Stars
A while ago, I snatched this photo from the hands of the fellows over at BothersomeThings.com.
It has become quite the seed of inspiration while I’m incubating Will Coffin stories. There are so many possibilities in this one image: is the kneeling man in the middle of a ritualistic acid trip? Is he there for some sort of genuine spiritual experience? Has he been given reason to hope that some artifact necessary to his existence lies in the duct, just beyond his grasp?
What ragged voice is speaking to him from within?
Audioboo-ography 36: Superheroine Outfits
[audio:http://audioboo.fm/boos/382193-audioboo-ography-35-superheroine-outfits.mp3]
Download!
(I was wrong – it’s actually Audioboo-ography 36.)
173 – Sgt. Smith and The Family Legend, Part 1 of 2
Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode one hundred and seventy-three.
Tonight we present, Sgt. Smith and The Family Legend, Part 1 of 2.
(Part 1 – Part 2)
[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp173.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)
This week’s episodes are brought to you by Geek Out! with Mainframe.
Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.
Tonight, Sgt. Smith relates some of his history with Capital City’s red-light district.
Flash Pulp 173 – Sgt. Smith and The Family Legend, Part 1 of 2
Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May
My Dearest Mulligan,
Do you remember, when you were twelve, setting up that “exhibit” in your backyard pup-tent? I still can’t believe you managed to sucker so many of the neighbourhood kids out of their dimes, just to see the upper portion of a nudie picture you’d badly taped on top of the rear portion of a National Geographic photo of a salmon.
Honestly, I swear Munchie Watkins only said he believed it so he could keep coming back for another look at poor bisected-Bettie Page.
Anyhow, I guess it comes to mind because of that story I was promising to tell you. Let’s see – it was 1983, and I was downtown, keeping an eye on a lady-rental joint. There came a tap on my window.
Frankly, it was cold outside, so I wasn’t terribly excited about having to roll it down.
“Hello, sir,” said the burly looking lamp-jaw, in a tweed jacket, who’d done the knocking.
With gaping mouth, I indicated my lack of tongue.
“Well, sir,” he said – politest man in Capital City, so far as I could tell – “I have good news, and I have bad news.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“The bad news is that I’m an undercover policeman – and that’s a cathouse over there.” He pointed at my establishment of interest. “I’m afraid you’ve fallen under suspicion, and I’m going to have to take you in.”
An unsettled frown came to my face.
As you know, it’s tough to make an impersonation charge stick when they aren’t all gussied up in a uniform for their mugshot.
“Well, now,” he continued, “you seem like a nice enough fellow, and I’m sure you’ve learned your lesson about hanging around a place of such ill-repute. For a hundred bucks I’ll let it slide and, so long as I don’t catch you in these parts again, we’ll keep your proximity to such a nasty site off your record.”
Shrugging, I reached into my back-pocket.
Now, I should mention, at this point, that, although he didn’t recognize me, I was well aware of the whole Sweet family. Grandpa was actually a bit of a legend – he’d spent most of the ‘20s running the hydrophobia scam: essentially he would tell people their dog had bitten him, and given him rabies. Don’t know if its true, but I heard that sometimes he’d even go so far as to run a little extra froth down his chin, to sell the idea. It sounds a bit ridiculous, but most people would pony up when he’d threaten a lawsuit, then demand compensation.
One of the reasons he was so remembered, though, was that he was caught out when an old woman, deeply in love with her poodle, gave his plums a taste of her Mary Janes for implying that little Coco was anything less than perfect. He confessed to a passing patrolman, begging to get her off of him.
Papa Sweet, his son, stuck mostly to parking cons. He’d charge folks for entrance into formerly-free lots, claiming management had changed and that he’d been instructed to collect fees. Then he’d book it. If he was really lucky, he’d do so in some poor fools car, after they’d mistaken him as a valet.
It was that last part that was his downfall – he got pulled in when a member of the local thuggery, looking to drop a hot car, gave him the keys. Little did Papa know the recently wiped-down borrowed-buggy was hauling the remains of another goon in the trunk.
He’d made it three blocks in his twice-stolen Buick before a broken tail light, and a persistent traffic cop, tripped him up.
Anyhow, there I was, ignoring the badge in my pocket. I fumbled around, then flashed Papa’s son, Bobby Sweet, (part-time grifter, and full-time jackass,) the universal sign for “uh oh, I’ve misplaced something important.”
Popping open the glove compartment, I shuffled through the sandwich wrappers within – then I turned my attention to the floor, scooting my hands under the seat.
Finally, I gave a long look at the battered den of iniquity. My eyes widened.
Digging up a pencil, I jotted a note out on some of the trash-paper.
“Officer, I have to confess, I must have accidentally left my cash inside. Can you retrieve it for me, please? I don’t want any further trouble.”
The tempting allure of my misplaced pocketbook was obviously dancing in his head, but he was professional enough to give me a hard look for suggesting such a thing.
Indicating that I had something more, he returned the note, and I added, “I’ll make it worth the extra effort.”
That was all it took: off he went, trotting across the street.
I was waiting at the door as he exited, his face red and his mouth scowling – then I busted him for frequenting a brothel.
See you Sunday,
Dad
Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.
Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.
– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.
Tatlin's Tower
Things are buzzing here at Skinner Co. World Headquarters, (ie. we discovered a massive beehive in one of the shipping bays,) but I wanted to drop in quickly and bring your attention to a marvel of never-realized architecture, which I discovered in the wake of yesterday’s radio-based urban legend.
It would have dwarfed the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The tower’s main form was a twin helix which spiraled up to 400 m in height, around which visitors would be transported with the aid of various mechanical devices. The main framework would contain four large suspended geometric structures. These structures would rotate at different rates of speed.
Planned as a sort of combination monument and radio tower, the behemoth would have been taller than the Eiffel Tower by approximately 80 meters, (or 260 feet, for my imperialist friends.)
Unfortunately – or, maybe fortunately, considering how many were starving in Russia at the time – it was never built, largely due to the civil war that brought down the Czar.
The picture above is, I assume, a mock-up or Photoshop-job; I couldn’t locate its original source. There are apparently models on display at the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Sweden and at Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow – Tretyakov Gallery also being interesting due to its proximity to Fallen Monument Park, which, to my understanding, is essentially a graveyard for Russia’s long history of epic sculptures depicting overturned political ideals.
Urban Legend: Cassandra's Radio Tales
The legend of Midnight Tales with Cassandra still abounds on the American East Coast. It’s said that, in the summer of 1973, a radio drama began appearing on an otherwise unoccupied AM band – while most believed the show to be a pirate broadcast, all seem to agree on the surprisingly high level of production values that went into the fourteen known episodes. Although the audio is reported to have been extremely crisp, most also cite their belief, at the time, that the shows were presented as artistic endeavors involving very little standard plotting, and heavily relying on incidental, naturalistic, dialog to explain the events as they unfolded.
Hosted by Cassandra, a sensuously-voiced woman, each episode opened with a theme played on pipe-organ, followed by a brief introduction by the hostess herself. While no transcripts remain of her prefaces, the apparent tag-line “listen now, or be doomed to repeat it,” is usually ascribed by those who claimed to have tuned in.
Not much attention was paid to the transmissions, as interest in radio as a method of telling stories had long been superseded by rock & talk programming blocks. This lack of relevance is also often cited as the reason why none of Cassandra’s tales were recorded. The only physical evidence that the broadcasts happened rests on then fourteen-year-old Benjamin Earl, who states that he happened across the show at the midway point of its first broadcast, and was careful to record each successive title, provided by the hostess, in his diary.
- The Murder of Selma Tyrone
- Saigon Follies
- The Three Mile Problem
- Flight 191
- St. Helen’s Warning
- The Fall of the Hyatt Regency
- The Lost Return of the Challenger
- The Preacher’s Swagger
- The Rise of the Mississippi
- Terror Comes To Oklahoma
- The Library Massacre
- The Waning Towers
- The Heat of Okuma
- Finale
It was only after The Three Mile Problem was realized to be an eerily faithful enumeration of the events that took place, in 1979, at a nuclear plant in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania – six years after the broadcasts – that listeners began to attempt to piece together the chronology presented by Cassandra.
While most of the episodes have now been linked (retroactively, skeptics argue,) with real life events, the fourteenth presentation, Finale, has yet to be solved out to an actual happening. The episode, remembered as fifteen minutes of a large group weeping and screaming, followed by a bassy rumble, then ten minutes of a lone child’s sobs, leaves few clues for those active in the forums and blogs that have sprung up around the mystery.
– source
