On the Run

Three A.M. The night still and silent. Doorway stinks of the street. Breath comes in plumes of white smoke. It’s cold enough.

No activity in the apartment—my apartment. Looks clear. No lights. No movement. Empty as when I left it. Maybe.

Pain in my legs. Pins and needles. Waiting too long here in the cold. Here in the dark. Time to move.

Hands in my pockets. Shoulders down. Avoid the light. Put on my street face. Blend in with the neighborhood, blend in with the dark. Move quickly (but don’t hurry) across the street to my door. Fish the keys out of my pocket on the way up the steps.

Car engine coughs. Don’t panic (ohshitohshitohshit). Stay calm. Black limousine: no headlights, dark windows. Glides down the street like oil down a stripper’s ass crack. Didn’t want to be seen before, but wants to now. Hum of the back window descending. All dark inside but for the glow of a cigar.

Keys are a dead weight in my hands—useless. Like trying to unlock my door with a marshmallow. From the car comes the stare. The presence. And then…

The cigar. Just enough for me to see it. Tap tap. Ash like falling snow.

Eight beats of my heart. The car window closes. Headlights ignite and the car slides away, quiet as if it were floating. I’ve been given a warning.

Two taps. Two days.

I know better than to try and run. The Generalissimo seldom gives warnings, and never twice.

The new Angry Piper’s Book of the Week will be up soon. Watch for it at Hill-TV.

Remember me?

Hi there. Been a while.

After my last post I vowed I would not return until my shitty Internet access issues were resolved.

They’re resolved. I’m back.

What have I been doing in the meantime, you ask? I don’t have to tell you. You’re not the boss of me.

I’ll tell you anyway.

What I’m reading: The Apothecary Rose, by Candace Robb. What I’m playing: Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction on PS2. What I’m watching: American Gothic on DVD, and The Shield every Tuesday night at 10. What I’m listening to: Howard Stern on Sirius satellite radio.

The Apothecary Rose is a historical mystery, the first featuring Robb’s Owen Archer, a one-eyed spy in medieval England. I have a thing for historical mysteries, particularly good ones. Many are instantly forgettable. This one is good.

Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction kicks ass. You get to be the Hulk. The Angry Piper loves his comic books, and has been collecting them since 7th grade. Despite having a full run of Marvel’s Incredible Hulk from roughly 1989 to present, I was never much of a Hulk fan (although his unofficial blog is hysterical, despite not being updated in almost a year). He’s a classic archetype of the Beast Within, but he was rarely portrayed that way; instead he was often just a big strong monster who kicks the ass of another monster every month. Bo-ring. The Ang Lee film took the Hulk in a different direction (following closely the influential Peter David work on the comic), but it too was pretty boring, topped with an incomprehensible ending (the scenes with the Hulk in them were the best, and they took up less than a third of the film). The game based on the movie sucked even worse.

Well, Ultimate Destruction redeems the gaming license, although I won’t pretend there’s much in the way of tortured psyches or the theme of id vs. superego in the game. No. You’re the fucking Hulk. And what does the Hulk do? All together now: HULK SMASH!!!!!!

Did I say this game kicks ass? Oh yeah. Smash cars. Toss trucks. Hurl soldiers. Obliterate tanks. Swat ‘copters. Level buildings. Splinter trees. Swing telephone poles like clubs. The controller even has a button that serves only one purpose: make the Hulk roar.

Nothing like flattening an entire city block and then having a good roar. Quite cathartic. I’ll have to let Dr. Murk borrow this one after I finish it.

I loved American Gothic, despite the fact that Dr. Mantodea clued me in to one important and annoying fact: on the DVD set, all the episodes are out of chronological order. Instead, they’re in the order they aired on television, with 4 unaired episodes rounding out the set. This makes the story somewhat difficult to follow, as there’s little in the way of continuity. It’s now easier to see why the show didn’t make it…die-hard fans can overlook shit like this, but the run-of-the-mill viewer isn’t going to continue tuning into something that makes no sense (unless it’s Twin Peaks, I guess). And, if I may address one of my loyal readers directly:

Tel, as I’m fond of repeating, I love you in the way only two people who have never met (and probably will never meet) can love. Don’t be a silly goose. I don’t fault you for not appreciating American Gothic, and I agree with you that if it was remade today, especially on HBO, which produces shows like Carnivale, Rome, and of course, Deadwood, it would be an exponentially better show. Despite this, I like it…although I realize it’s no Jeepers Creepers 2 (ZING!). :)

Five seasons in, The Shield is still the best fucking cop show ever. Better, in my opinion, than NYPD Blue, and that’s some high praise from me.

My Sirius subscription is the best money I’ve spent in a while. Of course, I spend an assload of time in my car and I’m a Howard Stern fan. But even if you’re not, there are so many other cool stations that it’s worth trying it out for a couple of months. Commercial and censorship-free radio is wotrth the 12 bucks a month, take my word for it.

My biggest pet peeve with Sirius is that there’s no Celtic music station (not a pet peeve most people are likely to share). There are 4 Latin music stations, and while I understand Celtic tunes are not as popular, I was hoping they would at least play some on The Globe, Sirius’s “World Music” station. Well, since I got my radio installed 3 weeks ago, The Globe has played ONLY Rolling Stones songs. I appreciate the Stones, but not enough to justify devoting an entire channel to them, particularly when said channel is billed as “World Music”. Oh well. Howard’s channels alone are worth the subscription; he didn’t take the freedom of uncensored radio and turn it into non-stop lesbians and strippers (not that I have anything against either, but I really don’t find listening to them arousing or entertaining). Instead, he has lots of comic bits he could never have done on terrestrial radio. And believe me, they’re funny as hell.

Well, that’s about it for now. This was just to alleviate the fears of those who may have felt I was either dead or in prison these past few weeks. Look for more posts in a couple of days, as I have lots to say about a great many things. Changes are a’comin’ folks.

And thanks to Malach for his milk carton crusade. I was touched. Really.