I’m sure the big production companies are going to want to option this story.  Although it’s a little off-season (I should have posted it back in October), It’s a masterpiece.  It was written by MrHattyHat (me), Atticusser, and MtyThor while we were attending a meeting together.   The idea is that one of us (me) started the story, then we passed it around to continue it.   Each color change represents an author change.  One thing to note: as we continued to pass the story around, it grew darker and darker in the room.  We had to resort to using our cell phones for light so we could continue writing.

Enjoy.

All Hallow’s Eve: The Legend of Sleepy Hallow

An original short story by MrHattyhat, MtyThor and Atticusser

“What was that?”

Under normal circumstances, two teenage boys walking in such proximity to one another—in fact, in direct physical contact—would have been considered socially unacceptable in Sleepy Hallow.  The Progressive Secularist mode of thought trending through the more metropolitan cities of the country had spread its viral strands in conspicuous ignorance of Sleepy Hallow—Smalltown, U.S.A, complete with its antiquated traditions of moral judgment and self-restraint.

But these were not normal circumstances.

Shivering from equal parts cold and fear, the boys advanced on their objective, neither one the least bit interested in completing it; neither one willing to be the first to volunteer his retreat.  So, on they crept.

Jake, the younger of the two, turned to Caleb and said…

“Quit trying to hold my hand, you fairy!”

Caleb did not respond, nor did he make any effort to distance himself physically from Jake.  Jake could complain all he wanted; Caleb wasn’t about to place himself any nearer to the darkness that filled the gaps between the trees on either side of Old Mill Road.

There was no moon tonight, which had seemed a good thing at first, since Caleb subscribed to a healthy belief in, and fear of, werewolves.  No moon meant no lycanthropes, at least, but the orb-less sky now meant that the mill road through Hawkins’ Woods was unnaturally dark.  It was quiet also…so quiet.

Jake hadn’t uttered another word, though the two boys were nearly embracing now.  The woods seemed to grow taller around them with each step, and the mill road grew narrower.  Soon the silhouette of the mill would appear before them, a great, decaying hulk of pure blackness against the star-speckled sky.  Caleb watched for it desperately, unwittingly holding his breath.

The mill road took a gradual bend and Jake’s feet shuffled and came to a stop.  His throat made a breathy whine…

“Eeaguheghheeeh!”

“Don’t do that!” squeaked Caleb.

“I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.”

“Did what?”

“You said, ‘Eeauheghhoooh!’”

“No I didn’t.”

Caleb was becoming frustrated.  Enough so that he strongly contemplated discontinuing the fervent grip of Jake’s hand and shoulder that would have required a flushed and stuttering explanation to a belated third party.  He couldn’t remember now why he had commenced the socially precarious strangle hold on Jake’s arm, but something inside him said that putting an abrupt end to it would be a bad idea.

“Eeauhgghheeeh!”

“I told you not to do that!”

“That was you.”

“Who?”

“You. Caleb.”

“It was?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m Jake, and there aren’t any other characters yet.”

“You’re Jake?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

“Oh.  I thought I was.”

“No. I checked.  The alternating order of the paragraphs distinctly implies that I am Jake.”

“Hmm…I must have lost track.”

Jake’s words proved an omen of change, however, for in the quiet shadows before them, a third character stood.  Watching.  Listening.  Existing.  This was the character the two boys hoped with all hope did not, would not, appear.

The character spoke…

“Uh…do you want me to leave you two alone?”

Stepping from the woods, Frank Nathan Stein wore an expression of amused mock revulsion.

“Dude, you scared the life out of me!” Jake shouted, immediately regretting the volume as his voice echoed along Old Mill Road, certainly announcing their presence to every ghoul and goblin in Sleepy Hallow.

“You guys look really gay,” Frank offered, joining in step with the boys whose hearts were just starting to return to normal pace.

“Just wait,” Caleb retorted, “walk along this road for a few minutes with us and you’ll be sticking pretty close too, I guarantee!”

There was an awkward moment of shifting eyes and silence as the boys realized that their terror-induced affection, which they each had conveniently avoided acknowledging, had just been outed.

“What’s with that weird light?” Frank asked finally.

“Don’t know,” Caleb replied.  “Must be the light from that big dude’s cell phone.”

“Yeah,” Jake agreed.

Another moment of strained silence and the boys stopped dead in their tracks.

“Big dude?!” They asked in perfect unison…

And then a cold voice broke the still night air.  It was a deathly whisper, a chill hiss that came from neither ground nor sky, and it said, “Holy cow!  New Mexico tied it up!”

The boys all screamed, falling to the ground.

“Eeeauheghheeeh!”

Then they died.

And so ended the lives of the boys: Frank N. Stein, Jake Ulah, and Caleb DeWild.

Though they died young, before their times, their passing proved to be the salvation of countless, nameless victims of horror tales of both film and print.

And thus it was.

Amen?

What the boys didn’t know—what they couldn’t know—was the true nature of those three mysterious figures who, at the end of their lives had manipulated them even as puppets on strings of ink, dancing on a paper stage.  What even those three otherworldly beings could not know, moreover, was that one of them—one of that very three—was not what he appeared.  One of them was not…human.But which one?

It was MrHattyHat, that’s who.

This kid should definitely consider an internship as a contributing author for The Word.

Comedy Gold!

Yes, I’m talking about myself.

Recently (as in the past two days) I was kind of forced by circumstance to migrate all of my hosting to a new server.  It was well time for that to take place anyway, so I made the plans and took care of it.  All in all it actually went pretty well considering I was moving websites, email, databases, etc. all while trying to maintain uninterrupted service to those who benefit from my hosting (that includes this site).

Well, the millions of you who read this blog may notice something conspicuously absent from the post archive: All posts since July!

Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, I lost some data…apparently.  To be honest, I have no idea how it happened either.  Before the old server went offline I synchronized the database files between the two servers, so the new server should have had all the latest from the old server.  But somehow, when this site came back up, it was light a few posts.  It’s very perplexing because it’s not like those posts were stored in their own files that got missed or something.  Theoretically, if the database files related to this blog from the old system got copied to the new system then all the posts should be here, but magically they are not.

So I’m stumped, and my apologies go out to MtyThor and myself–the authors of the only missing posts–and to those who may have had excellent comments on any of the posts (but not those who made dumb comments).

So I guess we’ll just build from here with a parting thought from that oft-quoted orator whose succinct expression of exasperation has never been more appropriate:

D’oh!

P.S. If I figure out what happened and how to fix it, rest assured that I will.

Among the myriad questions I have about this cartoon is this:  Does Spiderman, being a super-hero, have the same reaction to tailbone strikes that the rest of us do?  That Lecter-esque teeth-sucking sound?

If so, this must have been a LOUD one.

It wasn’t my post to update, but since Gee-Rant and Atticusser were both so vehement in their comments about the Invention of the Day requiring a sketch or schematic, I felt that MrHattyHat’s ingenious invention wasn’t getting a fair shake, so I took it upon myself to lend a hand.  I hope that my interpretation is true to MHH’s original vision for the device.

Per Atticusser’s suggestion, I am taking this opportunity to introduce the inaugural product in our new Invention of the Day category.

Introducing the Swiss Army Penchuku Sabre!

This ingenious device provides all of the following:

• Pen
• Sword
• Light Sabre
• Nunchuku (which is really just another pen, tied to the other one with string. But it’s a really hard pen.)
• Fishing Pole
• Corkscrew (but it’s a light sabre cork screw)

Many thanks to Atticusser and MtyThor for providing the inspiration for this invention.

Ok, the title might be a bit grandiose, but for those of you who are atuned to all things brilliant, the first few minutes of both this week’s and last week’s episodes of NBC’s The Office were treated to a real feast of the show’s own recipe of random comedy genius.

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, this week’s (last night’s) episode had not yet been posted to NBC’s web site, but the previous week’s episode is there.

In both cases, the entire episode is great, but you only need watch the first minute or two, prior to the introduction theme and credits, to enjoy the feast.

Bon Apetit.

I actually can’t say why.  There’s really nothing particularly ground-breaking in terms of music or animation, but I find this to be exceptionally well executed and dangerously mesmerizing.

I’m almost ashamed to admit that I even watched any of the Academy Awards broadcast this year.  I’ve almost reached my breaking point with Hollywood, so watching yet another installment of the Orgy of Self-Congratulations was definitely not easy to do.  Honestly, the only reasons I tuned in at all were 1) I had it on the DVR so I could fast-forward all the self-righteous speeches by the Hollywood elites who think they have any clue of reality, and 2) I was curious to see how Hugh Jackman–certainly the weirdest choice for a host in decades–would fair.

Sadly, even with the added benefit of the DVR, I still found myself being peppered by social commentary rife with assumed moral superiority by the most socialist, most permissive, least moral people in the world.

Take, for example, the weepy tirade given by Dustin Lance Black, the writer of the gay-fest, Milk.  I won’t even re-print it here because it doesn’t deserve the press, but suffice it to say that he won the hearts of Hollywood with his tearful hopes of one day falling in love and getting married…to a man.  Ugh.

My favorite line of the night though, and most indicative of my point, was from Tilda Swinton during the presentation of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  First, let me preface by saying that the format for the major award presentations this year was a sickening exercise in sychophantism.   With five nominees in each category, the Academy decided to have five previous winners arrive on stage to introduce this year’s nominees.  But it wasn’t just introductions, it was a love-fest of elitist drivel, speaking of the art of acting and the performances by each nominee as if they had done something actually significant.  You would have thought that they had saved Africa (a favorite, though rarely-visited pet preach of the celeb-elites) by the sheer force of their acting.

Anyway, during one such moment, Tilda Swinton was introducing nominee Marisa Tomei, nominated for her role as the stripper love-interest of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Now, brace yourself: you are about to be so deeply moved with elightenment and higher understanding as imparted by Hollywood that you will never consider strippers in the same way again.  Said Swinton, “[your performance] showed us that a stripper needn’t ever take off her dignity with her clothes.”

Is that a choir of angels I hear?  Yes!  I see clearly now!  Strippers are dignified, beautiful creatures who never have drug habits or STD’s!  Poor strippers!  They have been so misunderstood!  All this time I thought they just got paid to remove their clothes; but no.  They are here to teach us about dignity.

So, anyway, on the whole, the show was actually very boring, what little of it I actually watched.  The production as a whole was seriously the worst I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.  In the past, under the skillful control of such great hosts as Billy Crystal and Steve Martin, we would at least be served by a healthy dose of “are we really taking ourselves this seriously?”  But such was not the case this year.  The excuse given was that, in such troubled economic times (and don’t think that’s not a “hate Bush” message thinly veiled), it wasn’t socially conscious to do a big production, so they had to tone it down.  The reality is, Hollywood lost a TON of money this year so they just had to return to the “sell Hollywood” motif, which they certainly tried to do.

As host, Jackman had little face time, with a couple of big musical numbers mixed in, which only revealed that he actually can’t sing that well and, in my opinion, dropped his stock almost as precipitously as the Dow Jones in recent days.

So, to summarize, it’s not like I really expected much different, but this year was exceptionally appalling with its obvious anti-Proposition 8 agenda and willful encouragement of moral degradation.  The end result is that I’m actually, finally pretty much ready to boycott Hollywood for good.  And I mean that literally, I’m ready to leave Hollywood behind, eliminating it entirely from my experience, in exchange for good.  It’s ever more apparent that the two are becoming mutually exclusive.

Last night’s episode of Lost almost lost me.

I’ve been warming up to the series, a little, this season after a couple of seasons of cooling.  As I contended in a previous post, I find it hard to believe that the writers actually have any idea where they are going with the show.  That may not be exactly accurate.  After last night’s episode, I’m afraid the problem may be an even worse kind of disease: they know where they are going, at least in broad strokes, but they’re just not very good at getting there.

SPOILER ALERT: Again, if you haven’t seen it, don’t read it.

Case in point: The Oceanic 6 are trying to return to the island for reasons I’ll not get into in this post.  They meet up with a woman (Faraday’s mother) who is apparently the world’s leading expert on island affairs (second only to her son, perhaps). She informs them that the island is constantly moving through time, and that her son and his team have invented a way to track its movements through time to a high degree of probability.  It has something to do with a big pendulum like the ones you see in science museums (so if you see one of those, look for islands).

So, as the island moves, there are apparently “windows” in time that open, allowing objects–say…planes maybe–to pass through.  This is the key to getting back to the island.

Now, in discovering this key to returning to the island, which in this particular case involves a plane flight from the US to Guam, they also learn, thanks to Mama Faraday, that they must try to “recreate” the original flight as closely as possible.

???

See…you lost me.  You had me for a second.  I was getting intrigued because it sounded like we might actually be getting some answers at last, some glimpse of the grand vision of the show; but then you lost me.  Why on Earth would it be necessary to recreate the original flight?  What possible difference could that make?  Are you saying that if you don’t recreate it, it might not work and you might not get back to the island?  If that’s true, how could it possibly work when at best you’re going to have all of six of the original, what…200 plus passengers?  They have the wrong dead guy (Locke instead of Jack’s dad), too.  Oh, but you gave him something that belonged to Jack’s dad, oh…that makes it ok then! (hint: italics = sarcasm.)  Ok, so maybe the requirement is not the dead guy, just a dead guy.  Fair enough, but what about Claire?  Kate didn’t have Aaron with her (who once upon a time had some special significance to the island), so at least shouldn’t there be a pregnant lady?  To top it off, Ben was on the flight with them, which wasn’t the case before.

See, there are so many holes, and beyond that, the requirement to “recreate” the original flight feels to me much more like weak and uncreative writing in an attempt to explain why everyone is going back (i.e. extending the show) than it does coherent story telling with some overall vision.

So consider yourself on notice, Lost.  I’m not sure how much patience I have left for this kind of laziness, or worse, ineptitude.