Behind this door lies madness. And cheeseburgers.

Yeah, we got the goat. But I had a little trouble getting the movie. Let me explain. See, I’ve developed a surefire way of goosing myself into writing an introduction when it’s necessary. Rent a movie, watch it while I type, then force some sort of connection with the project at hand. Square peg, round hole. Pop! Done. And, for some reason, I got it into my head that I needed to see Who Can Kill A Child? before I attempted even the first sentence of this intro. This was something I needed to do. Or, as Clint Eastwood as John Wilson as John Huston tells his screenwriter in White Hunter Black Heart when he needs to shoot an elephant, “I want to do it before I do anything else in this world.”

This need arose from one of those obscure-o-thon Top Five lists they put on Rotten Tomatoes, with a trailer that showed creepy children doing creepy things (but without the corn). So I took the bait. But who would have guessed a title as memorable as Who Can Kill A Child? would  cause such pandemonium at Wild and Woolly, the greatest video store in Louisville and quite possibly the world? I go in there with this movie title on the tip of my brain, but when I get to the counter, I draw a blank, locking up on just the first two words. So I describe the trailer in detail. The hipster manning the controls just blinks. Concern growing, I tell him all I know in as many ways as I can:

“It’s Something Something…Kill A Child? Something like that.”

He goes, “We can’t do a keyword search, sorry.”

I say, “Seriously, how many movies do you have called Something Something Kill A Child?”

He says, “I need the first word, sorry.”

But I’ve lost this first word forever in a brain saturated with useless trivia and mad cow.  So I start tossing out possibilities, and now he’s sighing and reluctantly searching his ironic-sticker covered Commadore 64 for …

“Can You Kill A Child? Uh…Would You Kill A Child? Something Something Something…A Child! Something.” I’m throwing them out rapid fire as he bangs the keyboard, and, to observers, this exchange has gotta sound like I’m some psycho who wants to have this very serious conversation about morality with some bearded clam who’s just trying to do his job.

I’m asking him all loud, desperation oozing, “Will You Kill A Child? Could You Kill A Child? Should You Kill A Child? Would You Kill A Child?” (Look how fucking close I was with that one) “Won’t You Kill A Child? Can’t You Kill A Child? How In The Wide Wide World Of Sports Could You, Sir, Even Think Of Killing A Child?!”

I almost grab his face in my hands.

“Nope,” he says.

So I drive all the way home pouting, get those two pesky words off the Rotten Tomatoes list, then drive all the way back to rent my movie in petulant silence. And even after all that, the clerk doesn’t share my triumph or show any emotion whatsoever when he scans the movie. See, that’s why this place is worth all the pain. Sure, they’re smug. But they earn it because, so far, they haven’t not had anything I’ve gone in there looking for (that’s right, Jed, they had Chatterbox). You just have to penetrate their first line of defense, of course. That “crushing indifference” factor.

So, “how’s the movie” you ask? So far…yeesh. This is not what was advertised. I think I got tricked. It starts out with shots of Holocaust bulldozers and depressing documentary clips of starving children, while a narrator tells us all grim how bad children have had it all over the world. It’s sort of like the speech the obnoxious ornithologist in The Birds gives the diner crowd about how they’re one day gonna pay us back for our abuse. Such a weird flick though. Now that it’s gotten past the half-hour credits, this is like an entire movie made up of the standard “wicked children” footage that Sam Peckinpah sprinkles through all his westerns. Kids with cruel smiles, being all cruel. Except rather than roasting ants or giggling when a cowboy gets shot or going bang! with their finger, these kids are going bang! with real guns. And it turns out this movie bears little resemblance to the trailer or any of the online descriptions. What sneaky bait-and-switch has been perpetrated here!

And what does all this have to do with the book (that is soon to be, hopefully) in your hands? Nothing! Hey, you ever read a Harlan Ellison intro? Now, he knew how to do intros. Some of his intros are more famous than his books. In fact, he eventually had a collection of nothing but intros. What was the intro to that like, I wonder? Madness! I imagine the intro to a book of intros is something like the vortex in Evil Dead. But you need a connection or you’re gonna bail out, you say? Okay, In English 101, we instruct innocents (just like these on the screen, maybe a little older, but equally well-armed here in Kentucky) that they should start out their papers with an interesting anecdote. Or just an anecdote. Boo-ya. Now on to my thesis statement, which reads as follows:

This collection was supposed to be a gathering (♪ of angels appeared above my head ♪ ) of all the stories belted out at the nefarious 2012 Flywheel Magazine/Burnt Bridge off-site event in Chicago, Illinois, home of the Transformers darkest hour (Besides all previous hours. Have you seen Transformers III? I couldn’t tell what I was looking at. So glad they needed a crew of thousands to animate what appeared to be gyrating piles of aluminum Pepsi cans shit out of elephants). But, yeah, we had to swap some stuff around for this book. Not quite a bait-and-switch, as you’ll see later. More like the bait falling off the hook for no reason, which is no one’s fault, really.

A brief history:

I’d been reading Burnt Bridge, and Jason Stuart had been reading Flywheel. And we both dug what we saw in each other’s mags. So when Mr. Stuart got on the red phone and suggested an off-site reading at AWP in Chicago, I pounced. We could gather authors from each of our publications, see who was crazy enough to make the journey (most were going anyway for respectable panels ‘n’ such), and then book some joint to belt out some words. Jason did some recon and found out that the best (cheapest) venue was going to be somewhere called The Billy Goat Tavern in lower, lower Chicago. By lower, I mean it was fucking Mordor. Yeah, we weren’t the only off-site reading that weekend, as wiser, more reputable, grammatically perfect literary types were peddling their wares at a place called the, um, Beauty Bar, where you could get a manicure while you made your voice do that excruciating literary thing where it goes up…then it goes down (Garofalo does a good imitation in Half Baked). So right off the bat, when we found out everyone else was over there eating French fries with forks and saying all the right things, we were pretty smug in our squalor.

This is how noisy it was.

Another plus! The boys from Booked podcast showed up to record the whole fiasco. They also managed to somehow take a photograph of their posse, print it, frame it, then slap it on the Billy Goat’s extensive Wall of Fame in zero point two seconds. Their madcap scheme went off without a hitch, too. They only had to throw out this little picture of that guy who saved all those handicapped kids during the Chicago fire. It was the only known picture of the dude, but it’s cool. Booked was in the house! I’m just kidding. There’s another picture of that guy, but it’s hard to see his face because he’s on fire.

Anyway, if you click the little blue words up there, you’ll be taken to the original Shindig in Chi-Town readings, and you can hear us read our stories all belligerent and drunk! It’s like you’re here! I mean there. And by “us,” I mean it could be anyone you’re listening to. We had some pinch-hitters, you see. We had some bait and switchers. And by “stories,” well, that’s a crap shoot, too. And by “drunk,” I had half a beer and lost my mind since I’m a lightweight. Point is, you get the audios up there, and the text down here. You now own 73,982 stories. You beat the system.

But it went down great. Noisy and sweaty, but great. Michael Czyzniejewski started off with a perfect selection for the setting, too. It was a piece from his new Chicago Stories, published by Curbside Splendor, a book that was released that very day (!) and consisted of 40 flash fictions from the point of view of famous Chicagoans. One of these stories even mentions the Billy Goat Tavern. How many crazy coincidences do you have to ignore before you accept this night was destiny, huh, Mike? He also schooled us on the name of the venue, how the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern (made famous by the Belushi SNL “Cheeseborger! Cheeseborger!” sketch), wanted to bring a goat to Wrigley Field during the World Series, but was denied. So he put a curse on the Cubs, which has lasted a century apparently. Now, I’m not the biggest sports fan, but he convinced me. That other people are sports fans, I mean. No, it was brilliant stuff, made everyone want to hug each other like at the end of Major League, which was the best Cubs movie of all time, am I right? Fans, non-fans alike, I was ready to take it to the street after Mike was finished, even high-five the fucking cops that towed my car! Or as Mr. Czyniejewski said it best in “In a Prerecorded Message Played at His Hall of Fame Induction, Ron Santo Outlines the Inevitable Cubs World Series Championship Parade”:

“Everyone would give a speech, and then we’d head up Clark toward the field, stopping at the Billy Goat along the way to say hello, to tell everyone there are no hard feelings. Once we made it to Wrigley, we’d do three laps around, one for every championship so far, the stadium full to the gills with anyone who wanted to come in and feel the energy, exercise their ghosts, see the flag flying high on the centerfield post. Then we’d work our way back south, all the way past downtown, all the way to Kominski and do a lap there just to say hello to the fans on the south side, let them know that we did it, that we love them just as much as we can love anyone. Finally, we’ll end up back at Grant Park, and there the parade will end and the party will begin. Everyone will get up on stage, and everyone, no matter who they are, will get a chance to talk. The whole shebang might take three days, a modern Woodstock, fans drunk on Old Style, sleeping in tents, lots of free love, no one wanting to go home. not until it’s over, not until the final peanut vendor says, ‘Thank you,’ not until Monday comes and the mayor makes us leave. We could stay forever, you know, just celebrate until we die, but eventually we’d have to get back at it. After all, what would be sweeter than the next Cubs World Series title, two World Series titles, our second repeat, and after that, what Cubs fans deserve, what’s been long overdue, a Cubs dynasty to last the ages, nothing but total and complete domination.”

The crowd was definitely feeling it. He was a headliner playing the part of the opening band.

Next up was Mark Rapacz, reading an excerpt from his debut novel, (and Burnt Bridge Press’s flagship publication), Buffalo Bill in the Gallery of the Machines. It was a fun, gritty and steampunky, and everyone got a glimpse of this interesting new voice in pulpified fiction. Next was a Flywheel story (Jason and I were trying a sort of tag-team thing), this one featuring good sport Amy Lueck, Flywheel’s nonfiction editor, pinch-hitting for Richard Godwin’s horrific but weirdly sexy “Barbecue the Sink Beast.” She refused to do a British accent like she promised, so she can’t be trusted, but holy hell was that a weird synergy. If you click the blue words up there at Booked to sample just one audio version from that night, try this one. The contrast between the message and the messenger was mucho fun. Let’s see, who else? We had Joshua Schriftman taking the volume to 11, probably shaking footprints on the moon (“on a silver platter!”), and right about then I had a little trouble with one of the waiters who kept photo bombing us through a hole in the wall right between the reader and the crowd. This tiny head would go pop! “Do you have any empties?!? Go Bears?” right in the middle of very important shit. Anyway, he deserved what he got. Oh, and then there was that incident in the restroom. But I’m not gonna go into again. Certainly not here.

Okay, this is what happened. Imagine four of the most annoying goofballs in the world blocking the urinal, which is bad enough. But on top of that, they’re talking movie trivia, but getting movie quotes all wrong and wearing stupid T-shirts with a bunch of bullshit on them while you desperately have to piss and then run back up to M.C. a story. A story about urine no less! That’s really what Geoff Peck’s story was about, seriously, meth addicts drinking piss. So I’m sorry, I panicked. Took the low road in there. Said some stuff like, “Hurry the fuck up!” and “Uh…wrong movie yo.” Because of this, when we get outside, this frat-boy looking dude who doesn’t know shit about movies, with an American flag and lightning bolts on his chest, starts staring me down. Then the little head pops through the window and bleats, “Cheeseborger!” As I said to the Booked guys later, what’s even more obnoxious is that since that night, I’ve seen the Jaws quote (this is the quote they were baffled about at the pisser), “We’re gonna need a bigger boat!” constantly in a certain commercial. So now I think it might be worse than we imagined. What if they weren’t quoting Jaws at all? What if they were quoting a fucking commercial? Or what if this was some sort of code that he was going to overflow the urinal with piss? So many questions. But not worth talking about again. This isn’t the place. We have to stay on topic.

But real quick, let me just tell you something about this Kill A Child movie I’m watching. There’s a boy fishing, and this guy comes up and wants to peek inside the tackle box, to see “What kind of bait” he was using. The boy slams the box shut, ominous music plays, and we think, “Ooh, evil child alert!” right? But how do the filmmakers not reveal something weird in the box? This whole “bait” thing the hero mentions, that was intriguing, wasn’t it? That’s foreshadowing, I think! The perfect vacation island was likely the bait, so how about something else in the box to amp it up? Something this guy didn’t see? Does that make any sense? Anyhow. No bait and no switch in that scene. Just a missed opportunity. Kind of like… I don’t know. Hey, I can’t tie it all together. All the segues can’t be gold, man. Even Harlan Ellison had some bad intros. Like Last Dangerous Visions. What’s wrong with the intro to Last Dangerous Visions? Nothing. Except it hasn’t been written because the book is 50 years late, damn it!

So, yeah, it was a great night. Molly Laich, Geoff Peck drinking his own urine for an encore (the crowd couldn’t believe that actually happened), then Flywheel’s poetry editor Erin Keaton stepped in to channel the King of Pittsburgh himself, Chuck “Charlie Trout” Kinder, and his story featuring adopted son Pee Wee, a particularly lonesome lil’ space alien. She even added her own little epilogue, a poem she’d penned that actually rhymed. Take notes, lazy poets! Make ‘em rhyme. Every time.

Then Jason Stuart, the man behind Burnt Bridge, delivered some great southern-fried action with “Roscoe,” part of  his Raise A Holler multiverse, which is a new kind of bait-and-switch altogether, and one we didn’t even plan on because…this is a goddamn story from the future! Soon to be featured in Flywheel Issue Three. And when he dropped the drumsticks, I went off about getting my car towed by the cocksucking Chicago police department (no, no, they have tough jobs, my hats off to those heroes) by calling an audible with a story called “Bad Hand Acting” because it was the only thing I had with me that made cocksucking cops, er, “heroes,” look bad. Therefore, the story I’d intended to read is included within these pages, and the story behind that story is right here. Click the blue words for some blue hair and a history of beatings on beaches.

But the reading was action packed is what I’m saying. And all this insanity went down while most of AWP’s literary champions read their immaculate stories in very even, reasonable tones to surgical-mask-wearing nail technicians and a polite, well-dressed, attentive crowd at a fucking salon where people put vacuum bags on their heads. Why was that happening, you ask? Grooming and reading at the same time? Are they forever trying to look cute for potential author photos? No one knows. But, hey, that’s how they roll aboveground.

So, in conclusion, thanks to Jason Stuart and Burnt Bridge for the brainstorm, the Flywheel Magazine staff for all their hard work and skills, all the readers and writers and crazies in the crowd and/or blocking the urinals, and special thanks to Booked’s Robb Olson and Livius “Blue Thunder” Nedin, and also Sean P. Ferguson, who was positioned at the reading in such a way that suggested he’d be signing for the hearing impaired (no such luck, but it is a noble profession and we’re glad he reminded us of this), and all the rest of the Booked gang-bangers and entourage for joining us in the murky Chicago underground while the rest of AWP lounged above us in white robes with their pale, dainty feet soaking in little tubs of soapy water. We were the Morlocks. They were the Eloi.

This book is the result.

Speaking of words sounding better underground! This movie just ended and I can’t help but notice something about awesome old flicks like this. Check out these two screenshots. One is from that Chicago-bashing shit factory Transformers 3 that I mentioned earlier. One is not. I think I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with motion pictures these days.

This is what credits used to look like:

And this is what credits look like now:

That brick of nonsense is dangerously close to the snow-filled screen you get after you fall asleep, ain’t it? Fuck that shit. I take back everything bad I said about this kid-killing movie.

 ***

Excerpt from “In a Prerecorded Message Played at His Hall of Fame Induction, Ron Santo Outlines the Inevitable Cubs World Series Championship Parade” from Chicago Stories by Michael Czyniejewski © 2012 reprinted with permission, courtesy of Curbside Splendor.

So, exactly one year ago today, as a way to maintain reader interest during our gestating between-issues limbo, Flywheel Magazine had an idea for a contest based on a particularly creepy photograph, snapped in horror by a Friend Of The Wheel while he was relaxing in a cabin in the woods. Since then, we’ve sifted through thousands of submissions and found a fitting tombstone for the plump little critter featured in the photo. We’d like to save the image for the end this time, unless you still see it when you close your eyes. It’s a little like this though: the equivalent of a tiny Lloyd in a tiny mouse version of The Stand. Only in this version, a tiny mouse Randall Flagg does not come to let him out of jail. Or something (sorry, just read that book again). So here’s the award winning story! Okay, so we didn’t get to put up a winner between Issue One and Issue Two as planned, but between Two and Three is even better! Enjoy. He did not dine in vain…

A Room Like A Box

by Chris Deal

When he found the cabin after a day and a half of walking through first ankle, then knee, and finally hip-deep snow, Eleuterio was panicked with joy. It would be dry, he thought as he approached the front door, he might be able to start a fire. Each step was carefully planned as if he were approaching a deer thick with meat with a sharp-edged rock burning cold in his palm,  but the snow crunched and if the door were that deer, it would dance away, its feet not even touching the snow.

The cabin was derelict. The windows covered by an amalgam of grime and snow. Wood rotten and riddled with dead worms stacked to the side of the portal. The handle was unlocked and Eleuterio pushed it open an inch and moved sharply to the right, expecting the door to become stricken with a stigmata of buckshot. When nothing happened and the only sound was the wind cutting through Atlas cedar, he went inside.

One room a box that shared aspects of bedroom and kitchen. A copper stove with tubing out through the roof surrounded by cabinets. An empty cistern and a soiled pallet on the wooden floor. A single chair before a table littered with paper. He closed the front door, tossed his pack on the pallet, and walked around, getting a feel of the sanctuary. No drafts, the cabin was solid.  Smashing the chair against the floor, it shattered into small enough bits. The effort brought a tingling to his fingers, like pissing on an electric fence. He stuffed the salvaged fuel into the stove and balled up handfuls of paper stained with ink. It was a story, sections of something bigger forgotten in whatever exile made the writer flee this place. Something about a man in Moscow, soldiers, and a lost love. Eleuterio scanned the pages for the phantom image of a dancing cat before reaching into his pocket for the matches.

That first spark was a universe blooming into existence.

There was shelter and now heat, food was the next concern. The bark had left his gums bloody but it filled the void for a while. He went through the cabinets one by one. A few cans of beans in the first, three jars of shine and leather bag of cigarette tobacco in the next. Moldy bread and a sack of flour complete with clumps of bugs.

When he came to the final cabinet, he stopped. Breathing out through his nose, Eleuterio tampered down on the hope that there’d be something more substantial, dried meat or anything. He took a step back and scratched his jaw. He tore out a strip of paper and poured a generous helping of tobacco onto it, then rolled it together and sealed the tube with a pass of his tongue. He opened the stove’s door and bent to the fire, lighting the cigarette and blasting his face with the heat. He paced the cabin until the cherry burned his knuckle. He sat on the pallet and removed his boots, wiggling his toes. He sat the pack on his lap and looked inside, smiling so large it the cracks bled.

There was nothing but white beyond the window. He opened a can of beans into a pot on top of the stove and rolled another cigarette. The wind howled against the cabin and he kept thinking about the money that was coming to him. Once the beans were heated through, he moved the pot to the table and scooped them into his mouth. They tasted of ash but ate his fill.

He walked back to the last cabinet and before he could stop himself, he pulled it open. It was bare save for two dead mice. One was full and plump, but still dead, and the other in pieces. Tufts of fur scattered about and stained a dark brown. Tiny bones exposed, stripped of meat and fat. The tail had been nibbled nearly away. The bodies were stiff and nearly mummified. Eleuterio closed the cabinet and opened a jar of shine, taking a long sip and coughing at the burn.

The snow was halfway up the window. The cabin was being buried. He took another drink and sat on the pallet. His stomach roiled but he kept the food and shine down. He looked in the pack again but did not smile. Every moment was filled with a dread that a knock would come at the submerged door. He drank again and thought of all the money waiting for him.

photograph by Cam Hassard

● ● ●

Chris Deal is a North Carolinian in Illinois. He is the author of Cienfuegos, recently republished by Kuboa, and can be found at www.chris-deal.com

So, inspired by the list of car chases I fired off after being inspired by going to see Drive and then suddenly remembering the brutal stomping Ryan Gosling delivered in that elevator (“Hey, Girl. Just give me a second to clean my shoes. Then we’ll share that sweater…”) I have compiled a new list! This one is sort of tricky and long and will try your patience, but don’t give up early! Would the satin jacket, er, the hero of Drive give up? Didn’t think so. By the way, the last list was in no way definitive because I had to limit the candidates to car-chase movie I owned. So to remedy this problem, this list will be based only on movies I watched today, with special consideration given to VHS copies. Okay, here it is:

THE BEST MOVIE FIGHTS OF ALL TIME

10.) Die Hard

The last fight at the end with the blonde terrorist. I like this scene because all the motivation is on the side of the bad guy. Bruce Willis killed his brother earlier (in a lame fight where the guy just fell down some stairs?!) and now Tom Hanks’ nemesis from The Money Pit is out for revenge. It’s like a little mini-movie that’s more interesting than the whole hostage crisis. I was waiting the whole time for this guy to catch up with ol’ wise-cracking McClaine. And when he finally did, it didn’t disappoint. Even though the end of the fight is a bit of a cheat with the chains, I have to give credit to Bruce for telling the terrorist that he’s going to kill and eat him when they’re rolling around and he’s rabbit-punching him in the back of the bean. That is exactly the kind of gibberish you expect to hear in a fight. None of that noble, “You, sir…will die.” It’s more like, “Fuckin’ fuck, I’ll kill your fuckin’ head or something! Get off my nuts!”

9.) Hard Times

Can’t have any list without a Walter Hill movie! The last fight, of course (it’s almost always the last fight, ain’t it?) when Charles Bronson fights the mob’s ringer, who is so tough he looks to be slightly over the hill, shows up to fight in a suit, and only takes off the shirt. Leaves on the wingtips). Always be wary of the slightly-over-the-hill guys. Remember Tic Tac in Miller’s Crossing? As a fight, it’s a little too conspicuously bloodless, but it’s long and beautiful and has all the ups and downs, confusion, and heartache of a six-month relationship.

9 1/2.) Blade II: Bloodhunt

Sorry, couldn’t help it. Had to do the half floor from Malkovich again like I did with the last list. This is the spot where Matrix and Matrix Reloaded would have been if they weren’t disqualified for using CGI and that awkward, floaty, invisible-wire bullshit during their fights. First I was going to say the fight with the hundred Smiths in Reloaded, but that was way way too fake (especially when he grabs the pole). So then I thought about the first movie a little more and was going to go with the scene when Morpheus fights the agents in that cramped bathroom and heads are cracking toilets and elbows and fists are busting though plaster. But that clearly uses wires to get Morpheus to float fairy-like up that wall and the cramped bathroom brawling reminded me of a classic fight that’s going to go on another list later (in a comedy ,no less!). So then i thought, “What’s the best CGI/wire bullshit fight that wasn’t in a Matrix movie?” And the answer is Blade II When the stuntman/tax dodger/new non-actor version of Wesley Snipes fights the uber-vampire at the end and the uber-vampire is swinging him around by his feet and knocking the CGI Snipes’ head through the corners of the concrete walls. So much fun it almost made me forget there wasn’t a man there. Almost (fingers about an inch apart).

8.) Bad Boys

Whoa, whoa. No, not the bullshit Will Smith/Martin Lawrence crap. Anyone remember this 80’s movie with Sean Penn? No, not Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Why has no one heard of this movie?! This was my introduction to Sean Penn, as Mick O’Brian. Jeff Spacoli wouldn’t be allowed at the same party with Mick O’Brian. Penn vs. Esai Morales (last seen drawing Woody Woodpecker, playing the drums badly, and beating on his wife in LaBamba). This was the most realistic fight I’d ever scene up to that point. It was ugly, and it ended up on the ground like all fights do in real life. And it’s the only time I haven’t felt cheated when the good guy spares the bad guy. And there was a great pre-game leading up to this final fight, too, with Penn bashing the fuck out of two prison sodomites with pop cans in pillowcases.

7.) Friday

The moral of the story is clear: Guns are bad, kids. Craig’s dad’s warnings about guns (actually more like insults than warnings. He says that kids today are too afraid of getting their asses kicked) finally sink in at the end of the movie and young fortysomething Craig (Ice Cube) puts down the gun and realizes that to pull a trigger in a fist fight is immoral. However, it’s okay to use a fucking brick. Craig’s dad doesn’t notice this contradiction and declares, “That’s my boy!” when Craig brains Debo into oblivion, a villain who was actually less scary in Walter Hill’s Trespass where he was actually killing people (and wearing golf shoes). And I think his dad proudly called Ice Cube a “macaroni,” (!) too. Luckily, they explained how using a brick isn’t cheating earlier in the movie, if you listen close. They were telling another story about another instance that was full of contradictions (“What about that time Debo was choking me in my backyard?”) And, after much thought, someone says, “Oh, that was different.” See what he’s saying? You can apply this wisdom in any situation. Therefore, guns bad, bricks good.

6.) The Deep

The fight between two nameless toadies toward the end when all the double-crossing is going on. And I know I’ve seen these guys as nameless toadies in other movies. I just can’t remember where. One white, one black so that no one gets confused! The white one’s name is Kevin, but no one ever bothers to say the black dude’s name. This is called “casual racism.” This excellent fight involves chains, hooks, an outboard motor (!) and finally a strange neck-breaking duel (?). Seriously. It’s kind of like they’re arm-wrestling, but they’ve got their backs to each other and they’re grabbing ears and chins instead. It doesn’t make sense unless you see it. Maybe not even then. I’m watching it right now.

5.) Snatch

The final bare-knuckle brawl is a masterpiece of editing, music, and plot revelations. All to the tune of “Fucking in the Bushes” by Oasis, probably their best song because they don’t sing on it. Brad Pitt as “One-Punch Mickey” shows up in the ring hung-over and has to be beaten back into consciousness. And he gets hit so hard by that Italian monster that he’s knocked underwater. What? Yes, underwater in the boxing ring. It’s like one of those trippy Wrigley’s 5 Gum commercials. All part of his plan? Who knows. My theory is that Mickey tried to do the one-punch thing as soon as he walked into the ring, but was too drunk to throw the bomb. It almost knocks the guy out but not quite. Okay, maybe the movie would be funnier if Mickey just kept knocking people out with the first punch after getting paid by gangsters to take a dive, and even after all the threats and the murder of his own mother, he still didn’t understand what a fixed fight was. But if he did that, there wouldn’t have been that last sweet fight. Anyway, the moral is he’s not smart, and those people make the best fights.

4.) Barfly

Mickey Roarke as Henry Chinawski as Charles Bukowski vs. Frank Stallone (as Sylvester Stallone?) Henry gets his ass handed to him by Eddie the evil bartender, played by Mr. Stallone. (Hey, did you know that the computer’s spellcheck tries to turn “Stallone” into “stallion?” Is the computer a fan?!) And this all happens in the opening seconds of the movie. But we find out later that the only reason Henry lost that fight was because he hadn’t eaten anything! Luckily, he walks into the wrong apartment by mistake and find some bologna and white bread. Fuel! A full stomach turns out to be kryptonite to Eddie, and Henry beats him so bad that Eddie’s two ugly girlfriends start crying. This scene, about halfway through, is the whole point of the movie. You can ignore the “writer” subplot. Okay, sure, Henry gets a short story published, too. But the fight was clearly the climax. “You’re looking at a new man m’boy! I got a full tank of fuel!” Henry says, grinning through a mouthful of blood. Very inspiring to bad writers everywhere. I know mom says not to eat an hour before you go swimming, but you better eat an hour before you pick a fight.

4 1/2.) Raiders of the Lost Ark

Don’t worry, I’m not doing that half floor in Malkovich thing again. I just have to do four-and-a-half because I forgot this movie and I didn’t feel like redoing the numbers. Of course, I’m talking about Jones’ fight with the big bald Nazi outside that freaky looking plane (He probably didn’t even need to fight the guy, could that boomerang thing even fly? Crazy friggin’ Nazi science. No wonder they lost the war). Jones fights one guy, drags himself over to rescue the girl, and out of the tent walks this shirtless goon who wants a go. Jones’ weary “Okay, I’m coming” gestures, then his knees buckling from the first punch are priceless. Jones is losing, until he realizes he has to step it up with an explosion imminent, so he rallies with everything he’s got left and throws three big bombs to get the Nazi’s nose bleeding and distracts him enough to take the propeller blade from that goofy plane right in the mush. When the guy you’re fighting suddenly looks horrified and covers his eyes, you know you’re in trouble. Spider-man kind of did the same thing with that fight. Spider-man is talking a beating and has to rally back to distract the Goblin. Or was the Goblin trying to distract him? I don’t remember because what was most memorable about that movie was when Spiderman took that Goblin bomb right in the fucking grill. Slow-motion lips all flapping ‘n’ shit. Very cool. Sam was channeling his much superior movie Darkman for a moment there.

3.) Cool Hand Luke

Skinny, smirking Paul Newman up against hulking George Kennedy in the prison yard. And this would probably qualify as just a beating and not a “fight” and be on a later list if Luke wouldn’t have taken that last weak shot at Dragline’s face so he’d get angry and pound on him some more. Kept “coming at him with nothin’,” he says later over some beans. I used to wait for that scene as a kid whenever it came on the “Channel 11 4:00 Movie” back in Toledo.

2.) They Live

Low budget John Carpenter silliness with genuinely surprising ten-minute brawl in the middle between the two leads that suddenly stops the movie in its tracks. Rowdy Roddy Piper vs. Keith David. Duuuuude, he just wants you to put on the sunglasses, man! This fight is so long that even the stars have to start laughing about halfway through. I saw this back in high school, and outside the theater afterwards I heard this one guy kicking stones all the way to his car complaining about how terrible the movie was, but finally having to admit, “Good fight though…”

1.) Gummo

Those two neo-Nazi-looking slapheads. Brothers? Who knows. All I know is that this scene is great because they are actually hitting each other in the face. That’s the most you can ever ask for in a movie. Utter perfection. Thank you.

RUNNERS ARE UP!

11.) Equilibrium

The fist fights are sort of gun fights and vice versa, so in good conscience, I can’t really put one in the Top 10. However, the last fight when those two guys try to shoot each other in the face about 20 times is kind of awesome. P.S. The Gun-Fu in there is about as close as I might venture into the Asian arts of mano-a-mano simply because I think we can all agree that the martial artists in those films can beat any and all American asses at will. And that would be the whole list. Also, whenever I type “martial arts,” I want to type “Martian Arts” instead, and you would just be disappointed no one was fighting martians.

12.) Get Carter (2000) and Get Carter (1971)

Mickey Roarke and another Stallone. Rumor has it that Roarke broke one of Sly’s ribs that day by accident. That’s very funny since he kicked Frank Stallone’s ass in Barfly and 12 years later had a little fuel left in the tank for his brother. What’s next? Mickey Roarke vs. Stallone’s mom? Now, the original Get Carter had a great moment that wasn’t really a fight at all, but there’s no way I’m just going to talk about the terrible sequel and not the original minor masterpiece. Remember the pathetic guy Carter stabbed against the fence? What do you call that? Bringing no gun to a knife fight? Wait, that could be another list! Maybe later…

13.) Evil Dead II: Dead By Dawn

Ash fighting his own hand. And the fight is actually a little better when the hand is still connected to his arm. The hand “goes bad” and punches him out, dunks his head in the sink, and then cracks about five plates on his skull. Ash has to chainsaw it off, and then the hand just kind of runs around on its fingertips mumbling and gibbering (gibbering? yes, the hand was gibbering) and flipping him off and setting off mousetraps Tom and Jerry style. The hand is replaced by the same chainsaw that severed it (and pinned down by classic literature. Farewell To Arms! Get it!), then it’s replaced by a medieval robot-hand in the sequel that’s never really used to do anything except catch a sword or crush a beer can. Kind of a waste. Excellent films though. Personal favorites. Named one of my cats “Ash” actually. But mostly I just call him “Little Stupid.” He attacked my friend Nate. That’s another list.

14.) The Boxer

The fight where Daniel Day Lewis and some other guy are boxing and no one is allowed to clap. It’s apparently not polite to cheer while watching a boxing match in England, and the spectators (well-dressed assholes sitting at dinner tables) can only tap on their glasses to show approval. It starts out like the kiss signal those idiots are always doing at weddings, but then something creepy starts to happen. Without the crowd noise the boxing match gets disturbing. Hard to explain unless you watch it, but I think it’s trying to say that fighting is pointless when there is only the sound of the blows and cold British fops watching you do it. Kind of made me angry since I think if they wanted to teach a lesson about the futility of fighting then they shouldn’t have filmed every drop of blood so lovingly and called the goddamn thing The Boxer.

15.) Dead Alive (a.k.a. Braindead)

When the priest comes out to do battle with the zombie biker punks. It turns out the priest is like a ninja. but he gets bit in the neck, so that makes him a ninja-priest-zombie (?) Okay, it gets kinda complicated. But I have to give a shout-out to the ballsy ending of this film. It’s not a fight really and has no place here, but the best scene in this movie, and hands-down the goriest scene OF ALL TIME, is the showdown with the houseful of zombies and the hero running through them with a lawnmower high in his hands. At about the time he drops the blades down on the fifth or sixth zombie head, this goes so far over the top it becomes, dare I say, “art.”

16.) Body Parts

The barroom brawl when Jeff “Don’t Call Me Lawnmowerman” Fahey hits that guy in the head with the bottle, punches him into the ground, elbows the guys behind him who are trying to pull him off and finally gets kicked in the stomach. Sure, this fight would be unremarkable except for the fact that the “body parts” involved in the fight (Fahey’s right arm, a painter’s left arm, and a basketball player’s legs) were all transplanted from the body of a death row inmate! This idea is actually better than the execution (get it??) but the scene still cracks me up.

17.) Raging Bull

The six minutes leading up to Jake LaMotta (DeNiro) saying, “You never knocked me down, Ray!” still seems like the bloodiest boxing match ever, even though it was in black and white and made little sense. Bit of trivia, the real Jake LaMotta regularly signs posters for this movie because the actor is more famous. That happens a lot. For another example, see Marky Mark in overrated Oscar-bait The Fighter.

18.) Homeboy

Punch Drunk Mickey Roarke again! We’re talking about the last fight, where he’s getting hammered in the rain to the tune of some Eric Clapton guitar wankery. The fight ends with one of my favorite all-time images: Roarke sitting cross-legged in the middle of the ring, blood running down the bridge of his nose smiling while he gets counted out…and dies? Very powerful scene, and I think he really was supposed to be dead there because earlier Christopher Walken tells him that another hit in the head will kill him and every music cue and edit is for maximum emotional impact. The post-fight ending where he walks up to see his girl on the carousel seems like it was tacked on later for whiney test audiences. Can’t prove this though without more funding to continue research.

19.) Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome

Max’s fight against “Blaster” in Thunderdome itself. Not the best fight in the world, I’ll admit. The weapons on the walls are kind of wasted, the goddamn chainsaw is out of gas!?! Inexcusable. Like Chekov said, you can’t show a chainsaw in a post-apocalyptic cage match and not use it. And they’re hopping around on those silly bungee cords way too much for now reason. But it’s a very creative fight scene and, unlike the Matrix movies or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Wires, the puppet strings here are visible.

20.) Rocky IV

Rocky doesn’t make the Top 10 because Rocky fights are too goofy. But they do have their moments, and at first I was going to go with the Clubber Lang fight in Rocky III (Rocky begging for more shots to his own noggin’ with the taunt, “You ain’t so bad!”) because that really is the best comic-book fight in the series, and the best film, but I have to go with Drago’s fight in IV because he picks Rocky up by the neck and hits him so hard he feels it in the sequel! True story. That’s crazy, people! Why isn’t this an insult that’s used daily? Like saying you hit someone so hard you “knocked them into next week!” Or socked ‘em so hard “it killed their kids.” Dude. Think about this. He actually feels it in the sequel. Very impressive. And in that next movie, Rocky is brain-damaged from that shot. That’s even funnier. Rocky V should also be noted as the first time Rocky movies tried to insert a realistic, more down-and-dirty street fight into the silly shenanigans (which he does to even less impressive effect in the final Rocky Balboa) but it was too little too late. However, Rocky does refer to himself as a “ham and egger” and he does hit Tommy “The Machine” Gunn about five times in the back of the head with some nice cheap shots so… Hey! That reminds me…

Okay, I have a confession. Most of that stuff up there was just a ruse, a bamboozle, the rope-a-dope.

SO HERE IT IS!

THE REAL LIST, YOU LUCKY BASTARDS!

Fooled you with that first fight list, didn’t I? Don’t get me wrong, I like those movies, and I meant what I said. It wasn’t just pillowtalk, baby! It’s just that fist-fights are only the tip of the iceberg. The real list is all about cheap shots. It’s all about when you hit the guy when he’s not looking. It’s all about when you hit the guy in the back of the head, right behind the ear (It has to be behind the ear to count, like the opposite of crossing the foul line) and then, in a perfect world, you run away after you do it! That’s what you see out in the world and in bars (and who hasn’t done their share) and sometimes a little dose of reality does end up on the screen.

THE BEST SUCKERPUNCHES OF ALL TIME!!!

“I’ve never been in a fight yet where the other guy threw the first punch.  It’s a sure-fire recipe for losing.” -Sean Connery

10.) Scanners

The first psychic suckerpunch! Here’s what happens: a scanner scans another scanner by mistake at a press conference and his head blows up. Oops. Then the scanner who is left (Michael Ironside from Total Recall and Starship Troopers playing sort of the same (admittedly awesome) role every time) looks around…then runs away! Therefore, funny! The scanner duel at the end is cool, too, with guys staring at each other and popping veins until the good guy finally ignites. That’s what is known as a “decisive loss.” If you are on fucking fire when the fight is over, you lost, Jack. Trivia note: if you glare at something long enough it will not catch on fire or explode. After years of research, I’m finally confident with this conclusion.

9.) The Abyss

“See this? They used to call this ‘The Hammer.’” That’s the set-up by “Cat”, one of the burly oil-workers, as he holds up his meaty fist to threaten the guy who just poured Captain Crunch down the back of his greasy shirt. Teachers call this “foreshadowing.” Then, when Ed Harris is failing miserably (in front of his wife!) to defeat the twitchy Navy Seal one-on-one, “Cat” sneaks up behind the fight says “Hey!” and lets The Hammer fly. Possibly the best punch ever thrown in a film. The Navy Seal (Micheal Biehn who was also in the movie Navy Fucking Seals! Take that, Kevin Smith!) is launched about ten feet backwards, feet flying over his head. This is about equal with the punch in Snatch that sends Mickey underwater (teachers call all of this “suspension of disbelief”). And you know what? This punch in The Abyss sends the Navy Seal underwater, too! What’s up with that shit? I got hit hard enough in high school to get knocked out, but I didn’t end up underwater. I ended up halfway under my car. I sure would have liked to have landed on water instead of concrete that day (elbows stranger next to me, looking for support). Maybe it’s got something to do with science or the elements or quantum physics or something that makes this crazy magic water appear under your feet. Hey! Maybe if you hit someone even harder, they catch on fire! Wait, that reminds me! Scanners! I will now go back and make Scanners number 10 and move everything else around. Teachers call this “time travel” and will tell you it is impossible.

8.) Giant

James Dean runs up and hits Rock Hudson while Hudson’s own men are holding him back. Then he runs away! Therefore, funny! 10 years old and it cracked my shit up. Do you believe me now? Everything is funny if you run away after you do it. Everything. Unless it involves stealing someone’s baby. Or switching it in its stroller with a puppy. Or a stuffed wolverine (the animal, not the action figure). I’m thinking these are the only two exceptions.

7.) Snatch

And Snatch is back because I just like saying the word “snatch.” Seriously though, that first fight in the ring? One-Punch Mickey is supposed to throw the fight and that shot is great because you don’t expect it. But, you know, I like the very first punch Mickey throws in the movie even better, right after he does his proper stretching excercises. Remember that punch? It looked friggin’ devastating. It even makes one of the main characters start weeping. I was so inspired that I went around talking like Brad Pitt’s character for weeks after that. Which reminds me of the age-old debate: Would you rather fight Mike Tyson…or talk like him? Think about it (tapping the side of my head where the tattoo would be). Snatch.

6.) Hard Times

Gets a second mention because of the surprise bomb Bronson throws early on in the movie to knock out who? Kevin from The Deep! Hey, that’s where I saw that monster before! Poor bastard can’t catch a break. Except his neck. Oh, snap!

5.) Slam Dance

Never heard of it, right? The guy from Amadeus plays “Drood” (?) a hard-drinking cartoonist who is stalked by a skinny madman in a Members Only jacket. Madman in question is played by the writer Don Opper, and he had a very good idea in this flick. He hands Drood his business card which is blank on both sides. Drood turns it over and POP! right in the nose. Sucker. That’s like handing a guy a basketball or a lunch tray before you hit him (I’ve done both of these things). Only this was better because it occupied both his hands and his brain. You know what? If the card had said, “Turn Over” on both sides, Drood would have been unable to stop turning over that card forever, and he would have been in even deeper shit.

4.) Guns ‘N’ Roses Concert: Pontiac, Michigan, 1990

I was in about row 700, but I could see it all on the big JumboTron. About halfway through the song “You Could Be Mine,” a fight breaks out in front of the stage. Axl gets irritated and mutters to the security guards. They try to intervene but get shoved aside. Axl stops on the word “miiii-yyiiine!” and jumps into the crowd feet-first. His cowboy boots come crashing down onto some drunk’s head and security scrambles to throw Axl back onto the stage. About five minutes later, someone is carried out on a stretcher, and he starts the song over all proud of himself. Sure, the chances of him kicking the right guy in the cranium are pretty slim, but the crowd (me included) just decided to pretend that he got him. And here I thought it was me in the nosebleed seats! Hello! Okay, so it’s not a movie, but technically I did watch it on a giant screen so maybe it counts. Hmm, this is trouble. Starting to cross the line into “the real” (no more Matrix!) with concerts (hey, at least it ain’t fights in reality-based programming), so I’ll go back to the regular list ’cause if I start talking about fights in reality, it’s like Jonnie whimpered in Miller’s Crossing, “Where does it all end? And then there’s the ethical question…” Simply can’t be getting caught up on real fight-stories or we’ll be here all night, and they are nothing to brag about. I might end up shamefully telling you about the time I was at a bar in college and everyone was lined up down the stairs to leave and this clown was pushing his way back up the stairs to get his jacket or something and he was shoving guys and girls in the back and yelling at everyone so I moved over and punched him in the back of the head. Ha ha! He wheels around, grabs some poor slob by the neck, some dude next to me that the asshole thought had hit him, and proceeds to beat the shit out of this other guy. I just whistled and checked the ceiling for spider webs and kept moving on down the stairs. At some point, me and about ten other guys ended up in a dogpile at the bottom. Later I was told that this townie started shit with another innocent man way down that street while I was excitedly telling the story to people right outside the door. He must have hit five people trying to locate the origin of that cheap shot (Right here, dude! And I’m still laughing about it!) and maybe that’s nothing to be proud of in theory, but if there had been room for me to run away right after, it would have been undeniably funny. Anyway, back to the movies. Or…

3.) The Real World: Seattle

Okay, don’t say a word right now. Just listen and let me explain. This was some funny shit a decade ago. Dave, the kid who owned no shirts and a New Yawk accent gets into a scrape with some locals outside a bar. Slow-motion replay reveals Davey stepping up behind a local and delivering two solid overhand rights into the side of his face. Well done. This punch was great not just because this was the very first fight we finally got to see on a reality-based program, or because it was a decent cheap shot. What really made this incident memorable was the fact that this local wannabe tough-guy who got dropped, this local clown who was out trying to impress his friends by starting shit with some sorry-ass Real World posers, he will get to re-experience the humiliation of getting jacked in the face by, yep, an MTV’s Real World cast member every time that episode airs. I’m surprised we haven’t read about the poor bastard in the news by now:

“Seattle Man Climbs Clock Tower With High Power Rifle. Tearfully Demands ‘Rematch.’ Police Scratching Their Heads.”

2.) The Way of the Gun

The Opening scene of the movie. When Ryan Phillipe hits the mouthy chick (Sarah Silverman) next to the guy he’s supposed to be fighting. What a great idea! As explained by the director, he always thought about doing this when he feared he was gonna be forced into a fight. That way, even if you get beat up, the guy who kicks your ass has to ride home next to an angry girlfriend with a bloody nose. Kind of ruins it for him, you know? Smart guy, that director. Which is why he wrote The Usual Suspects, a better movie than this. Nice extended Peckinpahesque shoot-out at the end though.

1.) Slap Shot

There’s really no contest. It is the greatest cheap shot in the history of cinema. Number 17 (but number one in our hearts) Jeff Hanson from the Charlestown Chiefs is just casually skating around during the warm-up against Peterboro, minding his own business when Number 2 on the Patriots looks at him for approximately three seconds. Apparently, that’s waaaay too long. A violation worse than prison rape, and you have to give Jeff credit for shaking off that glare and continuing to calmly skate around to rink for another lap, and it really takes a better man to turn the other cheek and HOLY SHIT! What just happened? Jeff blasts him full in the mouth and starts a team-against-team brawl that no one can break up because (as the announcer gleefully shouts) “There are no officials on the ice!” The funniest, and most satisfying moment of mindless violence ever filmed. And that’s two things that ain’t easy to pull off. Hey, speaking of “patriots,” after that brawl, when Jeff was screaming to the official that he was “trying to listen to the fucking song!” at that very moment, I actually felt more pride for our nation and our national anthem than I do when I drive up behind any idiotic post-911 “America Love It Or Leave It” bumper sticker.

BECAUSE MY FRIEND RACHAEL HATES HOW I DO THIS…

MORE LISTS OF THINGS NOT ON THIS LIST!

11.) Casualties of War

Michael J. Fox almost gets blown up by the guys from his unit while he’s talking a piss. So he walks out of the toilet, grabs a shovel, steps up to their card game, then buries it right in the biggest dude’s face. Too bad he then tosses the shovel away (!) and into nemesis Sean Penn’s hands. Penn looks confused and calls him “Dinky Dow” (?) which must be Vietnamese for “dumbass.” Fox should have handed out shots with that shovel at that poker game for the next hour. “One for you! One for you! Where you going? Two for you!” Sigh. I just don’t understand. Nice swing though: elbow up, just like those crazy kids paying their dues in the Minor Leagues in…

12.) Bull Durham (and The Untouchables)

Fighting over a seemingly 103-year-old Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins tells Costner to step outside “and party.” Once they’re out there, Costner pulls a baseball from his sleeve like freaking Houdini and dares him to hit him in the chest with his “100 mph fastball” (we’ll have to “suspend disbelief” again with this stat since Newt’s, I mean, Nuke’s gangly arms appear to be throwing about 12 mph tops). And as predicted, Nuke (Robbins) couldn’t “hit water if he fell out of a fucking boat.” Never mind that it would have been better if Nuke had brained him with the ball (then ran away!) because Crash (Costner) actually throws a nice punch. Even Nuke reluctantly says so. Left-handed jab right in the mouth. And seeing how Crash bats left-handed in the movie, this must be his preferred shot in real life. Almost makes you forgive Costner for Dragonfly and Massage in a Bottle. And he apparently likes the left-handed jab so much that in the movie The Untouchables, he throws the exact same punch. Same situation, too: guy walking right into it, running his mouth, Costner quick left-jab. POP. In The Untouchables, however, this punch becomes a major plot point, as the man whose face he broke recognizes him at the infamous slo-mo train station sequence. See, if he wouldn’t have hit that guy earlier in the movie, he wouldn’t have had to high-step down those steps after a baby carriage like Bugs Bunny during that shoot-out.

13.) Heartbreak Ridge

When “Swede” finally gets out of the brig and faces off against Clint as promised. Maybe it’s not really a suckerpunch but it seemed like it. A very short fight, too. Swede is on the ground is zero point two seconds, and the guys in the platoon scream like children and scatter in fear. Which is what any sane person would do when a Mount Rushmore-looking Clint growls he about to “knock them off the fucking planet.”

14.) Time Bandits

When John Cleese as Robin Hood hands out the stolen goods to the poor and his muttering underling keeps socking the shuffling, elderly beggars in the face. Cleese asks if this is “absolutely necessary” and the translation of the Merry Man’s reply kind of sums up everything about fist fights in movies: “He says he’s afraid it is, sir.” Cleese: “Okay, carry on then!” BASH!

15.) Tombstone

When Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) takes the gun out of that Tom Cruise-looking cowboy’s belt and smacks him in the head with it while he’s still talking. And his slap-attack on Billy Bob Thorton in the beginning is funny, too. Slap!slap!slap!slap! Russel: “Are you going to do something about it, or are you just going to stand there and bleed?” Poor Billy. He slapped Thorton so hard he knocked him stupid and he ended up doing a documentary about it called Sling Blade.

16.) Starship Troopers

One of the pussified male-model-looking leads in this movie (Casper VanDien) actually delivers a decent cheap shot while the other pretty boy (some Melrose Place doof) is turned around and talking off his jacket before the fight. Dumb shit. All to the music of Mazzy Star on the jukebox??? Will they have a comeback and be that popular in outer space bars a hundred years from now or what?

17.) State of Grace

Gary Oldman smashing a pitcher of beer into the face of some poor schlub talking to his girlfriend. All to the music of Guns ‘N’ Roses on the jukebox! See! Now that’s more like it! Music so timeless, that’s what should have been playing on a jukebox in space during a bug war.

18.) Shaft (2000)

When Samuel Jackson hits American Psycho boy and loses his badge over it. Felt so good he does it one more time for the road.  I enjoyed this so much I named my other cat after him. The black cat, of course.

19.) 12 Monkeys

When Bruce Willis hits the pimp with the telephone about 92 times. That looked pretty painful. I also like how he’s just absentmindedly beating him with the phone until Madeleine Stowe can finally get his attention.

20.) Internal Affairs

When Richard Gene jacks Andy Garcia in the elevator, then throws Garcia’s wife’s underwear in his face, laughing: “You know what she wanted, Raymond? Right in the ass! I couldn’t believe it!” Whoa. Talk about rubbing the loser’s nose in it. Definitely gets bonus points for poor sportsmanship.

21.) Midnight Run

I was going to stop at twenty but this movie has like five suckerpunches. All from DeNiro distracting the rival bounty hunter by pointing anywhere and yelling: “Hey, Marvin! Marvin! Look!” POW. Marvin is played by the imposing dad in Some Kind of Wonderful, a John Hughes movie where Marvin wants nothing more than for his son, 26-year-old terrible painter Eric Stoltz, to go to college in spite of the beating he’s headed for at the cool guy’s party. And judging by his performance in Midnight Run, it’s a good thing he didn’t teach Stoltz how to fight. Supposedly this actor also got very angry on the set because DeNiro actually punched him in the face a couple times. Marvin does get his revenge with a car door towards the end though.

22.) Kalifornia

X-Files sex addict David what’s-his-name delivers a shovel to Brad Pitt’s face (was that a shovel?) with a good swing, solid form, and elbow up, just like Fox in Casualties of War. This shot finally made Brad Pitt’s white trash maniac stop muttering that crap about “seeing doors” or whatever the hell he was babbling about. But Brad does have the best line in the movie when he’s refining his baffling pick-up skills, yelling out the window of the car at some women: “Shave that thing and teach it to hunt!”

23.) Goodfellas

When Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) goes to have a talk with his girlfriend’s date-rapist next door. What’s the last thing the punk says before he has a mouthful of gun metal? “What you want, fucko? Want some of…” Crackcrackcrackcrack. Ha! He said “fucko?!” And this looked like it hurt, too. And how about his brothers who were standing around the Corvette watching Liotta get his beat on? Thanks for having my back, bros! See you at dinner tonight! How awkward’s that gonna be? Actually this might not qualify as a suckerpunch since he hit him with a gun. Kind of like Spider making the mistake of bringing his mouth to Joe Pesci’s card game Okay, we’re gonna need a new list…

BRINGING A FIST TO A GUN FIGHT!

or…

THE BEST FIGHTS WHERE SOME DUMBASS THOUGHT THEY WERE SQUARING OFF FOR A FAIR FIGHT AND GOT SHOT OR STABBED INSTEAD!

1.) Escape From New York

Snake Plisken squares off in the ring to fight the futuristic inmates’ biggest goon and, right when they were going to brawl, Snake smokes him in the back of the bean with a spiked bat. Fight over.

2.) No Escape

Pretty much the same thing from Escape From New York (as is the movie), but still a good gag. Ray Liotta squares off on a bridge against the futuristic inmates’ biggest goon and, right when the guy screams his battle cry, Liotta buries a huge knife in his chest. Whoops. Fight over.

3.) Raiders of the Lost Ark

Everyone knows this one. I guess he didn’t actually bring a fist to a gun fight but simply a knife to a gun fight instead. “Just like a wop,” Sean Connery said in The Untouchables (right before the “wop” with the knife backs out the door and Connery realizes he’s actually brought a musket to a machine-gun fight. oops!) Anyway, sword-wielding bad guy shows off a bit and Jones shoots his ass. Supposedly this was filmed as an afterthought instead of a long whip/sword fight because Ford was tired that day. Even if that’s the case, it was a very inspired solution. One of my most vivid childhood memories that doesn’t involve Godzilla or my dad’s porn stash.

4.) Edward Scissorhands

You heard me right. This movie is violent as hell. And Anthony Michael-Hall brings a bat to a scissor fight! Dumb shit! He gets stabbed like a shish-ka-bob for his troubles. Very troubling ending considering all the fairy tale stuff that led up to it. I had to go buy the damn thing.

5.) The Getaway (1972) and The Getaway (1993)

Both versions have the Doc McCoy character getting the drop on the double-crossing partner (Michael Madsen in the remake) by casually shooting him full of holes and leaving him for dead. Actually the bad guy had a gun, too, but he still gets caught snoozing by Alec and Steve McQueen for no good reason. However, said bad guy does bring a bullet-proof vest to the gun fight, and therefore Doc has unknowingly created an unstoppable revenge machine that plagues the heroes for the remainder of both movies. P.S. An “unstoppable revenge machine” is a very important aspect of a successful movie and a phrase I use at least once a week. Ask anybody. Beside my unstoppable revenge machines, I mean.

6.) The Driver

Same kind of thing as the last one. Not really a “bringing a fist to a gun fight” but just Ryan O’Neil getting the drop on someone. Shoots him right through his own driver’s side window. Cool scene because we didn’t know he even had a gun until then. Even one of the bad guys says, “I don’t get it, a guy with you’re attitude never carries a gun…” O’Neil says nothing to this because he’s always had one, and he’s going to shoot that guy with it about 15 minutes and 5 scenes later. Okay, I could do fast-draw type situations forever, and they shouldn’t really count. So no more, I swear.

7.) Wild Bill

Jeff Bridges as Wild Bill (looking quite a bit like an evil Lebowski) is losing a fight against a bunch of army guys who are mad because Bill beat up their buddy the night before. Bill’s taking a pounding until the bartender puts guns in Bill’s hands and it turns into a massacre. Cheaters never win, huh? I love the voice screaming, “Damn you, Wild Bill!” while staring down the barrel of the gun. BOOM. By the way, this is the movie you wanted when you were frowning through the True Grit remake.

8.) Deliverance

Burt Reynolds brings a bow and arrow to break up the surprise party at “Sodomy Creek.” Did you know that’s what they actually call that stretch of river these days when they give tours. Ziiiiip! That’s the sound of Reynold’s arrow, not the slobbering inbreds’ zippers. ‘Cause, like, they didn’t have zippers. They had over-alls. Nasty.

9.) Kids

Original title: “Bringing Your Fists To A Skateboard Fight.” Poor kid gets a skateboard in the mug, then gets a grade-school beatdown by every kid and his cousin in the entire park. The final goodbye from Casper is pretty sick. Not as sick as his final goodbye in the movie though. “Don’t worry, it’s me Caspar.” Double nasty.

10.) Steve-O Video

Same thing actually. The fringe B-squad of the already has-been Jackass crew are skateboarding off traffic, and some guy gets out to talk shit. He gets hit in the face with a board. Notice that the victim gets smoked with the side of the skateboard with the wheels. I guess he didn’t want to get blood on his Social D stickers.

11.) The Last Boy Scout and The Fan

Player brings a gun to a football game! Holy crap! Makes me smile just thinking about it. One of those times when you’re kicking yourself for not thinking of it first. Touchdown! Three dead. One of the best opening scenes of all time. So good that Tony Scott sort of tried it again at the end of his other (much weaker) movie The Fan. Except he had an umpire bring a knife to a baseball game. Not nearly as good, only reminds us of the greatness of the original idea. So, when does someone bring a chainsaw to a hockey game? Wait! That was Mutant League Hockey for the Sega, dude!

12.) The Long Riders

A couple of unarmed guys get shotgunned through a store window in slow motion (by a Carradine and a Keach, I think? So many real-life brothers in this. Shoulda called this movie No Brides For Seven Brothers).  And I believe this execution comes after some fairly mild backtalk. But like Clint Eastwood said in The Unforgiven after doing a similar thing, “Well, he should have armed himself…”

13.) Wild At Heart

Kind of the flip side. The guy with the knife is outgunned by an unarmed but berserk Nicolas Cage with insane Elvisidal Tendencies. Like a machine, Cage bangs the bad guy’s head on the floor until his skull cracks open like a six-egg omelet. All this in the opening five minutes of the movie. My roommate Gary back in undergrad was haunted by this scene. He said once (with his bemused Southern accent) “I think about that scene a lot. I think that would be the best way to kill somebody in a fight.” Best part is when Cage lights his cigarette and points a bloody finger to grunt at the woman who paid the man to pull the knife.

14.) Natural Born Killers

When Mickey (Woody) slices up the coach from Major League in the diner, leaving fingers on the ground and his shoe and half a piece of key lime pie on the counter. Does key lime pie look like Jell-O though? That didn’t look right at all.

15.) Return of the Living Dead

When the manager from the medical supply warehouse hits the main zombie with the baseball bat. Damn, that was easy. Hell, they should have tried that an hour ago. Speaking of zombies…

BONUS BABY LISTS!

THE BEST FIGHT BETWEEN A SHARK AND A ZOMBIE!

1.) Zombie (a.k.a. Zombi 2)

The underwater shark/zombie fight (and why are the zombies underwater again?) where they used a real shark and not a real zombie. But it might actually be a real dead shark that’s getting pushed around by divers off screen. However, it’s eye does blink when the zombie bites into it. And I’m not just doing that thing where you title a list that can only have one movie on it just for laughs. I just want to throw down the gauntlet in hopes that someone else will please try to do another zombie/shark fight. It’s like Ice Cube finally sharing the screen with Ice-T in Trespass. A friend of mine called that combo a “nice cool drink!” Zombies and sharks, baby! Two tastes that go great together!

THE BEST FIGHT BETWEEN ’60s TEENAGERS AND SORT OF ZOMBIES!

1.) The Wanderers

Okay, what the hell is up with that football field brawl at the end of this movie? Are the “Ducky Boys” actually a gang of the undead? I don’t know if it was the creepy music or what, but I felt very uneasy during that bizarre apocalyptic brawl. And the hero’s dad is so far gone into beserker mode (swinging around a chunk of the football teams’ bench that he punched loose) that he socks his own son in the gut when the fight is over while roaring at the sky in slow motion. Made me want to have a son, raise him lovingly, go to his first football game, triumphantly defend him against a mob of zombie greasers, then not slug him in the stomach for no reason.

THE BEST FIGHTS AGAINST ANIMALS!

1.) The Edge

The final scrap between Alec Baldwin & Anthony Hopkins and that bear. Sorta plays like an R-rated Great Outdoors. I couldn’t believe there was like a third of that movie left after they killed the damn thing either. Sweet run-in with those geese in the propeller. Humans lost that fight, too.

2.) Razorback

When they battle the giant pig in the evil dog food factory. Actually the pig looks fake, kind of like people are sliding around a big pink pile of plastic and bullshit, but we’re still talking about a giant, man-eating pig here. By the director of Highlander. So, yeah, just in case anyone accidentally rented Ricochet, hoping to for Russell to make at least one more halfway decent movie, this was the one you were looking for. And notice the two trigger-happy cavedwellers and their three-legged dog. Hmm. I wonder how that happened?

3.) The World According To Garp

The middle of the movie when Garp gets his rematch against “Bonkers,” the dog that bit off a chunk of his ear as a child. A decade after the initial attack, Garp finally gets a chance for some payback and bites off a fuzzy chunk of Bonkers’ ear after it won’t give him back the rest of the pages of his windswept short story that he wrote to get the girl. A payoff more uplifting than all the Rocky movies put together. And the girl got got.

THE BEST BEATDOWNS!

1.) Casino

The baseball bat tap dance on Joe Pesci and his brother’s noggins. The sick, meat-smack/homerun sound effects alone (bonkbonkbonkbonkbonk) will make anyone wince.

2.) Romper Stomper

When the skinheads finally get their asses handed to them by about 600 Vietnamese kids. They come pouring out of that van like it’s their first day at Vietnamese Clown College. Lots of punching and yelling and bodies. A very long, very kinetic, nerve-wrecking scene.

3.) Goodfellas

When they’re all beating on Billy Batz (but without the bats!) to the somber tune of Donovan’s “Atlantis.” Hey, was DeNiro smiling when he was repeatedly planting his shoe during that scene?

4.) Kiss of Death (1994)

When the kid from Zebrahead (Michael Rappattack, the one with the shit-stained Elvis T-shirt in True Romance) gets beaten to death by Nicolas Cage to the tune of House of Pain. No shit “house of pain.” Garage of pain is more like it. Should have put one of their yellow raincoats on that radio for the splatter though. On a side note, it was also the first time I ever saw a soft-eject boom box. I remember that more vividly than most of the beating actually. You know what? Maybe there should be a list of best music during a beatdown? No, no, no! Too many lists! This way lies madness!

5.) True Romance

When Tony Soprano beats on “Alabama” for what seems like about a week. The scene would be unwatchable if it wasn’t for her blood-soaked victory. I like how Christian Slater busts in when it’s all over and can’t do jack shit to help. Just in time, dude. Thanks for nothing.

6.) Clockwork Orange

The fights in this movie are mostly cartoonish and over-stylized, but they do hit Billy Boy and his droogs for quite a long time with those chains.

7.) Dazed and Confused

When Adam Goldberg pours his beer on the head of the goon that was picking on him (“I’m smoking reefer, motherfucker!” Uh, isn’t “reefer” supposed to calm you down, holmes?) and then triumphantly cracks him in the face. Almost made the suckerpunch list if it wasn’t for the depressing beating the goon then proceeds to rain down on the hero. Oh, well. What can you do? Hey, the goon tried to warn him earlier that he was there to “kick ass and drink beer.” Guess what he was all out of? Yep. Ass.

8.) Blade Runner

Is it just me or does every character in this movie beat the fuck out of Harrison Ford? Watch very carefully for the quick shot of blood in the shot glass when Ford grabs some vodka after a hard day’s work “retiring” overly-emotional androids. I’m telling you, he never stops bleeding in this flick.

9.) Drive

Hey, girl.

ONE MORE LIST!

THE BEST FIGHT THAT ENDS WITH SOMEONE’S HEAD BEING PULLED OUT OF THEIR OWN ASS!!!

1.) Society

From the makers of Re-Animator. Seems to be about some underground cult of freaks who kind of melt into you while they suck your eyes out and drain your body and then reach in through your ass to squeeze your brain. True story. The characters keep calling this particular move a “shunting,” but to quote the dude in Princess Bride, “You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” So anyway, the young hero (Billy Warlock from short-lived Baywatch fame) squares off against the toughest ass-grabbing alien, and right before the bad guy is going to jam his fist up the hero’s ass…he turns the tables by jamming his fist up the alien’s ass instead! Oh, snap! Then Billy works his hand up through the alien’s body to grab the inside of his face through his eye-sockets with sort of this reverse bowling-ball grip maneuver. Then he pulls the whole nasty mess out of his ass. The entire cast is shocked into silence, and the movie can do nothing but roll the credits. A moment so hilarious and disgusting that you’ll almost forgive what a shitty movie it was. An important milestone in cinema.

CAN’T…..STOP…..MUST….MAKE….LISTS….

THE BEST BEATDOWNS GIVEN TO INANIMATE OBJECTS!

1.) Gummo

When those redneck dumbasses take on….wait for it…..a chair! Remember how the fist fight in Gummo was real and made it onto the decoy list? Well, this is 100% real, too. No joke, sometimes during this fight, it really seems like the chair is winning. Utter genius.

2.) Office Space

The copy machine beatdown to tune of “Still” by the Geto Boys. “Die motherfucker! Die motherfucker!” The best shots are the last ones when its nemesis, hate-filled Michael Bolton, tries to go back for more with a handful of wires while his friends restrain him. As intense as any real gangster movie beatdown and just as long.

3.) The Pit and the Pendulum (1990)

The opening scene when the inquisition goons (led by Lance Henrikson) find the defendant “guilty!” and tie him up for 50 lashes of the whip. Uh…too bad the defendant is already dead and buried. Never fear! They find his grave, dig him up, and lash away at the corpse until the dusty, skeletal head bounces off and down the hall. Hilarious. From the guys who brought us Re-Animator and Society.

4.) Rocky

When Rock trains by punching on bloody slabs of frozen meat hanging in the freezer. Really a great scene that makes you forget the crimes that Stallone went on to commit against straight-to-video film making (Avenging Angelo anyone?). Truly his finest moment, but actually it reminds me of something a little better from…

5.) Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead

When “Critical” Bill (Treat Williams) is working out by punching on a corpse in the back room at the funeral home. “He don’t mind much!” he says. Neither do we!

6.) Rollerball

The drunks out shooting trees with a ’70s version of a laser gun. Really a very strange scene. And there’s probably an ecological message buried in there, too. It’s the only part of the movie that doesn’t involve the Rollerball game footage that is remotely interesting. But holy balls beware that remake. And save the trees, they are us. I think the band Rush said that. Of course, they also said, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Then what if you choose not to choose not to decide? What then? Huh? Huh??? That’s what I thought. Fucking canucks.

AND FINALLY…

THE BEST ANTI-FIGHTS!

1.) Fight Club

A movie about fighting without any really good fights. Except maybe when Norton pummels a blonde Jordan Catalano from My So Called Life to suppress his own gay tendencies. Okay, maybe when Norton as the nameless narrator beats up himself in front of his boss. Kind of looked like Evil Dead 2 to me but still pretty funny.

2.) Lost Highway

The hero stumbles into the porn producer’s house and sees his girl getting banged on the projection screen TV by the asshole he met and the party and, to add insult to injury, Marilyn Manson’s band, too! He should be furious, and you’re ready for some punishment, when, suddenly, after a good initial crack with a little naked lady statue (which leaves two funny nipple-shaped holes in the dude’s face) the bad guy screams in rage and leaps forward and CRUNCH! Impales his own head on the corner of a glass table. Whoa. That was fast. At least the hero stops to study the twitching bloody aftermath so we can, too.

3.) The Chocolate War

The final boxing match where they take turns pulling punching instructions from the ominous box is strange and almost compelling. As is the earlier scene when the hero gets beaten up (I mean “down”) by a bunch of 3rd graders (like Clockwork Orange, “It was youth having a go at….uh, youth!”) Yeah, that would be hard to live down. Better to be caught masturbating like one of the villains.

4.) Femme Fatale

The scene where Antonio Bandaras runs up to fight the guy who’s grinding on Rebecca-whatever-Stamos on the pool table. Their tussle hits the hanging light bulb as they stumble off-screen, and we only see the shadow of the fight on the wall and her reactions to it. Friggin’ brilliant. This fight, compliments of a bored Brian DePalma, seems to involve headbutts and a pool stick at some point, but it’s hard to watch the shadows animals on the wall behind her when the girl seems so happy to be watching the fight for us.

5.) Raising Arizona

When John Goodman and Nicolas Cage try to fight in that tiny trailer. Elbows and fists crunch through the walls by mistake (like Morpheus and Smith) and, the best part, Cage accidentally drags his knuckles across the ceiling when he was going to bring his fists crashing down on top of Goodman’s howling head. A great, horrified look and yelp from Cage when he looks down at his hands.

6.) Jamon Jamon

The two rivals beating each other in the balls with ham hocks. And the title simply means “Ham Ham” right? That’s a nice touch. Winner!

7.) Monty Python and the Holy Grail

More like the anti-sword fight. We all know this one. I’ll move on so some clown doesn’t start endlessly quoting it.

8.) Pulp Fiction

Apparently Bruce Willis beat some other boxer to death because he tells the cab driver all about this (in the deleted scene he says it’s the other guys fault for “fucking up his sport”) and we hear something about this story on the radio, too. So why don’t we see get to see it? Kind of like the diamond heist in Reservoir Dogs that Tarantino decides we don’t need to see. He’s more interested in everything else that happens around the heist and the fight, and I guess I can respect that (even if I did complain about not seeing this fatal bout when I left the theater). Tarantino barely squeaks by with this artsy technique, but in some movies (like fucking Porky’s) there is just no excuse for this. So we’ll finish up with…

LAST ONE I SWEAR! (I can’t be trusted, but who’s still reading at this point?)

THE WORST FIGHTS OF ALL TIME!!!!!!

1.) Clerks

This is low-budget, sure, but that’s no reason for the ineptitude. When Dante and Randall finally have it out once and for all, all we get is some girly flailing around and some candy bars being tossed from off-camera. Complete and utter failure as a fight. Come on, Gummo didn’t have any money either, but they made the top of the Big (fake) List. You know why? Because they were actually hitting each other in the face (a glaring omission in every Kevin Smith movie). Real fighting rises above any budget problem or pretentiousness. Actually punching the actor, or the director, in the face is always the perfect remedy.

2.) Unbreakable

When Willis’ “unbreakable” hero fights the killer/home invader at the end. You know, they didn’t really test that “unbreakable” theory enough. But his kid was on the right track when he offered to shoot him. Thanks, son! This kid was the only one in the movie really thinking (tapping the side of my head with a better movie). So, yeah, Willis finally gets to fight crime instead of mope around the movie and slooooooooowly lift weights. He confronts the serial killer after an accidental dip in the pool. Too bad all he does is hang on his back like a drunk and get tossed around the room until he finally chokes him out. What the hell was that crap?

3.) Dolemite

Every fight in this movie is awful. Still a great film, but the slovenly, slow-moving hero is throwing arguably the laziest punches, kicks, and karate chops of all time.

4.) Rear Window

I realize that both of Jimmy Stewart’s legs are in casts, but did his lip have to quiver when the bad guy threw him out the window??? My favorite Hitchcock movie, but Jesus Christ, his arms weren’t broken.

5.) Mean Streets

In the middle of the movie, someone calls someone a “mook,” and after much debate about the word’s meaning, they decide it was an insult. The pool hall brawl that results is one of the longest, dumbest-looking scrapes in history. That might have been the point, I guess. But I just don’t know.

6.) Porky’s

The country-fried kid keeps going back to Porky’s Pub and getting his ass kicked all through the movie. But the filmmakers, in their infinite wisdom, don’t think we want to watch any of these fights. We just get this kid stumbling into scenes to fall into record players and punch bowls and making shocked girls squeal. What. The hell. After one of these mystery fights, the kid even mumbles, “I got one of the bastard’s teeth.” And he shows his friends a tooth!!! Well? What happened??? How did he get his tooth?? Can we see the fucking fight, please?!? It’s like the old westerns where the cowboy stumbles into the scene with an arrow in his ass, and then you get to hear what action-packed mayhem just happened to him instead of seeing it. And how frustrating was that?

That’s it for now. Add to this list in the comments if you get so inspired. I know I forgot a bunch, but my fingers hurt. And not from fighting. Until next time.

this is actually sort of a terrible punch

P.S.  It looks like another event is up and official, too. March 1st will be The Wrong Kind Of Reading at the Galway Arms (near where they shot Dillinger I’m told). This reading, if you check your program, is “loosely” affiliated with Plots With Guns, and will have readings by Anthony Neil Smith (author of the new novel All The Young Warriors), Kyle Minor, John Weagly, and me, among others.  They’re calling this “literary pulp,” (whatever that is), or “transgressive” (better, mostly because submishmash doesn’t recognize that as a genre for some reason). This thing, I will definitely be reading at this thing, so…sorry about that in advance.

Anyway, to clarify, March 1st at the Galway Arms with guns, March 2nd with Burnt Bridge and Flywheel at the Billy Goat, the bar where the two dudes in American Werewolf in London took refuge, and March 3rd at The Slaughtered Lamb is pending, depending on the mint jelly. Come hear this. We will say things that can’t be unsaid. We will use words on you.

The First Flywheel Reading - October, 1871

So, tonight I finally saw Drive. Believe the hype. And, as I just said to someone who wasn’t really asking, it was a little bit of Heat, a lot of Walter Hill’s The Driver, a sprinkle of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, dash of Death Proof, splash of Mann’s Thief, smattering of Vanishing Point, as talky as Two-Lane Blacktop, what sounds like the music from Xanadu, and because it’s the reason for the season, even some of Carpenter’s Halloween thrown in at the end for kicks. You do have to endure The Frog And The Scorpion fable for the millionth time, last heard in The Crying Game and even Skin Deep for Christ’s sake, but it’s worth it because the scorpion in the movie (a childish design on the back of the hero’s satin jacket) should get a supporting actor nod for the emotion it brings. Not that the lead doesn’t give much emotion (okay, he doesn’t), but the movie knows this, and even uses his endless pause-button moments (“speak, damn you!”) to screw with the audience. But the scorpion. Yeah. After a particularly brutal beating in an elevator, I swear I saw it trying to catch its breath.

This jacket really did just float around and drive cars by itself.

Anyway, it got me wondering where this movie might fall on my master list of car chase flicks, and, yeah, it got in there. And I’ll jump on any excuse to tinker with this, so let’s get to it:

The Invention Of The Wheel!

“On the roads, it was a white-line nightmare…” - Mad Max

Who was the first to do it? Someone somewhere slid over their hood, jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled out. Well, maybe not peeled out, since the first chase probably involved horses, unless a horse can peel out on dust. Maybe wet grass. The Dukes Of Hazzard did it all the time. And then someone started chasing them! It probably happened all over the world at the same time, just like those cave men who invented the wheel(s). See, it wasn’t just one wheel, don’t let ‘em fool ya. They always talk about the invention of the wheel, singular, but it was definitely spontaneous wheels everywhere. And if four cave men in nearby caves rolled four wheel out into the sun at the same time, shit you almost got a car! Then someone started chasing them. Then someone invented movies. Then came the list. It was just that simple. Trust me, I’m a scientist…

The Best Car Chases Of All Time. Or…The Best Car Chases In Movies I Happen To Own (so if you see one I omitted and want to take me to task, the response will be, “Okay, but that movie isn’t in the pile next to my stuffed Cthulhus”)…

10.) The Hidden

The first chase in the movie. The rest of the movie mostly feels like Beastmaster-era straight-to-cable stuff. See, apparently, aliens are among us. And we’d probably never guess this…until they started stealing high-end sports cars and rocking to bad heavy metal music while mowing down old people in wheelchairs. This is a great opening to a movie (right up there with The Last Boy Scout’s football game) where the audience is shocked into a satisfying kind of stupor thinking the movie will be better than it is. It starts with some crazed-looking business man robbing a bank, tearing ass down sidewalks in a black Ferrari, nodding along with the music and grinning wildly while plowing through police road blocks (with Twin Peaks’ Agent Cooper as the good alien, doing his spaced-out Agent Cooper thing about two years early). So the audience is as confused as the cops at first, and for a while you think you’re strapping in for the greatest film of all time. And it isn’t. But for a second, you think it might be.

9.) To Live and Die In L.A.

The chase about halfway through. When the two “good” guys screw up their scam to steal drug money from one group of criminals (actually the FBI) to buy counterfeit money from another, which happens to include an utterly bonkers Willam Defoe. Turns out the deal they were ambushing was being staged by for a bust, and our heroes have to drive the wrong way through traffic to escape. Agents materialize around every corner a decade before The Matrix, and it finally starts to dawn on them that they fucked up pretty bad. At least it starts to dawn on one of them. The other one, William Peterson from Manhunter and, tragically, CSI (a show that will forever be remembered as fucking up dumbass juries with a little bit of knowledge), he keeps his head, happily flashing back to his recrectional bungee jumping from the opening scene (the birth of extreme sports?) And this cop also follows the most important rule of the road: “He don’t lose his composure in a high speed chase.” Just like Tom Waits told us. Of course he can’t follow the other rule: “One-Way Traffic yo.”

8.) Raiders of the Lost Ark

No, I’m not calling it Indiana Jones and the Whatever Whatever. That re-naming was just more revisionist history nonsense from Lucas. But you almost forgive him for some of his mistakes when you see this scene. Good guy crawling all over that truck like a chimp, lots of Nazi slipping under the wheels, cheap shots from everyone. Maybe it’s more like a fight scene than a chase scene, but that truck is oh, sooo lovingly filmed and gives the scene lots of momentum. And this scene is right after what is arguably one of the greatest fist fights of all time: Jones against a big bald Nazi with the help of a propeller. What a sweet brawl that was. Those guys were throwing bombs. Fist Fights, sigh, that’s gonna have to be a list for another time.

7.) The French Connection

The only chase in it. Come on, you remember it. Gene Hackman steals a car to chase the bad guy riding on the elevated train above him. And he seems to be killing, or at least maiming, several innocent people during this pursuit. Hackman plays Popeye Doyle, the first of the Dirty Harry-type cops that swamped the ’70s, and he does a fantastic job gritting his teeth and screaming and honking the horn. And that horn is like the annoying baby forever crying in Eraserhead. The whole sequence must have been very nerve-rattling back in those days. Maybe a little tame in this jaded age, but with today’s movies you never get the pleasure of watching the cop shoot the bad guy in the back in frustration at the end of a chase.

6.) Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome

The last chase in the movie. The one where Max doesn’t really drive a train full of kids to a dead-end escape through the desert. More bizarre dune-buggies ramming those metal wheels like moths to the flame. Okay, maybe it was just the nostalgia of seeing desert + Max + wheels + Evil Village People-lookin’ bad guys and hoping that combination would still equal magic. And maybe it don’t. And maybe he’s not all that mad in these movies anymore without the R rating. And maybe the “last of the V-8s” is being pulled by horses (say it ain’t so!) but it’s goddamn Mad Max we’re talking about, so it’s guaranteed a spot on the list.

6 1/2.) Grand Theft Auto III

This part of the list is like the half floor in Being John Malkovich. This is where the Matrix Reloaded chase would be if it wasn’t disqualified for turning into a chickenshit video game (and what’s up with the cars missing their mufflers when they flip over?) But then I thought about it and decided that Grand Theft Auto III gets the spot. Simply because in this game you can take your car chase into the park with a five-star wanted level and stand on that little island and shotgun police and FBI cars out of the sky when the computer sends them flying off the bridge above you by mistake. A sweet glitch sends cars screaming over your head on fire while you just keep lighting them up over and over and over and over. Like an awestruck friend whispered when he saw it happen, “It’s like the end of the world.” So, you see, this is the actual video game that deserves the slot. Matrix Reloaded is just a video game that you can’t play.

5.) Bullitt

You know what chase. Do I have to say it? Mustang Vs. Dodge Challenger. Mustang wins. This chase has been overrated, then it was underrated, then overrated again. I put it at number five because it effectively blurred the line between reality and fiction when Steve McQueen clicks on his seat beat and stabs the gas…then does all the driving himself. It’s not really a movie anymore after that, kind of like when he slapped his wife/co-star in the face in The Getaway. Things hit close to home. Sure, maybe he’s like Jackie Chan and he’s just a stuntman pretending to be an actor, but we’re talking driving not fighting so who cares. And the hell with The Great Escape motorcycle jump. Sick of hearing about that. This was Steve’s defining moment. (This just in. It was a Dodge Charger, not Challenger. I blame my confusion on years of hearing Super Soul in Vanishing Point saying, “Here comes the challenger…” which I didn’t realize was the name of a car until a decade later).

4.) Mad Max II: The Road Warrior

The last chase. When Max tries to drive a decoy truck full of sand through about fifty screaming apocalyptic nutjobs (or “Smegma Crazies” ?! if you have the subtitles on) and their colorful array of custom, high-octane vehicles. Bizarre muscle cars, dune buggies, harpoon-equipped El Caminos, and jet-powered forklifts all take their turn under Max’s eighteen wheels. Watch close for what happens to The Humungous’ two hostages when Max slams on the brakes. Oops. Sorry about the rescue, guys! The death of Max’s own beloved ride (“shoulda had a V-8!” I kept waiting for someone to slap their forehead like the commercial) is more tragic than when that tornado hit Little House on the Prairie and Charles lost his faith. Seriously though, this movie might be the most satisfying view of the future I’ve ever seen. When I tell you that I want to collect gasoline from car wrecks in cracked Frisbees, trust me, I really do. Maybe some day (checks gas prices, loads crossbow, adjusts football shoulder pads) some day…

3.) The Driver

The last chase in the movie. Camaro Vs. Red Pick-up. Cat-And-Mouse action in a warehouse with a very pleasing crunch when the mouse finally gets caught. What makes this chase so satisfying is the build up to it when the bad guys make the mistake of having the hero test-drive one of their cars with them riding in the back seat. The nameless “driver” bashes the stuffing out of their ride, scraping it against every sharp corner he can find. A beautiful, unnerving, punishing scene. Also watch for the end credits when the cop is left “holding the bag.” Get it? Get it?? I swear I’m not talking about balls. Speaking of…

3 ½.) The Driver II (a.k.a. Drive)

Come on, it’s pretty much the same damn movie, right down to someone at the end of the flick left holding the bag. But it’s better, too. And the opening chase got my ladyfriend to turn to me and mutter, “You know, this is the first car chase I’ve ever cared about.” How did it do this? By doing the same things The Driver did. Cat-and-Moose moves, slowing down, turning off the lights, almost exclusively filming from behind the wheel. The second chase ain’t no slouch either. Looking a bit like the chase in The Seven-Ups, it was fast, hectic, with a brutal ending that shows a car stopped cold is just as effective as one that explodes.

2.) Mad Max

The first chase in the movie. Two ugly, piss-yellow, poor-man’s Fast and the Furious looking police “interceptors,” a motorcycle driven by a guy named Goose (and anyone named Goose ain’t gonna last long), all chasing someone calling himself “The Nightrider” who drives during the day instead and gets oddly emotional during pursuits. A great chase and a real sense of danger for the stuntmen here. How many Aussie day-workers were “killed or injured during the making of this film?” Rumor has it that they got paid in beer. The chase, and the movie, starts kind of lighthearted, then things quickly escalate into serious vehicular mayhem. A van, a camper, and a baby all wander onto Anarchie Road (that’s how they spelled it, not me) at the wrong time. And if you freeze-frame your movie when The Nightrider is stomping the gas pedal, you’ll see a tattoo on his toes. I won’t tell you what it is so there’s more of a chance that you’ll try to find it. Also, for another free Easter Egg, check behind the CD tray on your copy of Tool’s Undertow to see a cow licking its own ass. You’re welcome! Seriously, what if this picture is hiding under all of your CDs…

1.) Ronin

The last chase in the movie. Mercedes Vs. Audi, going Mach 12, lot’s o’ traffic, a real sense of danger for the characters, pedestrians, and especially that dude on the bike that eats it. Too bad the movie kinda blows. Perfect chase though. No music for the first 2/3rds of it. Okay, maybe it should have stuck with no music the entire time, but still, this sequence is as close to perfection as a car chase in a movie (that I own) ever got.

Runner-Ups (Runners-Up? That never sounds right)…

11.) Goldeneye

Tank vs. Peugeot. Bit of a mismatch. Bond, driving the tank, accidentally destroys St. Petersburg as a result. But don’t tell me those teeny tiny foreign cars sprinkled all over those streets weren’t destined to be chewed under tank treads some day. And I think they were trying to say something profound about the end of an era with all the Russian monuments and historic symbols being destroyed. And the message is clear: tanks fuck shit up.

12.) Terminator II: Judgment Day

Truck vs. Harley vs. mini-bike. I think the truck plowing through cars when the T-9000 first jumps on board is better than the famous chase through the reservoir, but still lots of twisted metal (and T3 might have made the list if it hadn’t computer-faked its cars, dammit). Hate, hate, hate the kid in this movie though, especially everything he says, catchphrases or not. Quit trying to make Tex-Mex teen slang happen, dude. Oh, yeah, the helicopter smashing into the S.W.A.T. van later is sweet, too. I remember people cheering in the theater way back when.

13.) The Blues Brothers

It’s just a comedy, so sometimes it’s easy to forget that this movie always seems to be on the brink of Carmageddon.

13 1/2.) Highlander

No one is really chasing anyone, so it doesn’t really count (but I wanted to end the big list on a lucky number). However, the bad guy stealing the car and driving through pedestrians and oncoming traffic with a screaming passenger is just too much like Grand Theft Auto: Vice City to ignore. The bad guy is also singing like Tom Waits, which then morphs into Queen. And Queen wrote the song “I’m In Love With My Car” so there’s some kind of synchronicity going on here that is bigger than all of us.

BONUS LISTS

The Best Anti-Chases!

3.) Fargo

Just when you think the chase is about to start, the tail lights flicker in the distance and one of the cars is upside-down in the snow. Tragic because of the young lives, and, more importantly, the chase, was cut short in its prime. Sniffle. Only one of those things is really a tragedy though.

2.) Way of the Gun

The chase right around the first third of the flick. When the two guys take turns sticking their feet out and walking their cars for some reason. Not sure if it works as a scene, and it probably only looked great on paper, but it’s got to be some kind of important milestone in car chases.

1.) Wages of Fear/Sorcerer

Same movie done twice, thirty years apart. Both excellent. Trucks hauling nitro and old, soggy dynamite through the jungle at about 5 mph. The building-the-trucks scene in Sorcerer to the tune of Tangerine Dream makes me want to build a truck and die in it, too. The original is a little Frenchified with scarves and striped shirts, but both movies are twitchy/sweaty masterpieces.

The Best Movies That Are Sort of One Big Chase But Don’t Really Contain A Single Good Chase!

9.) North By Northwest

Arguably the first mindless action movie. Hitchcock admitted the title meant nothing, the chase meant nothing, nothing meant nothing. He just wanted to end a movie with a man hanging off Lincoln’s nose at Mount Rushmore. You know what it was originally called? The Man On Lincoln’s Nose. And no good chases to speak of. So why is it on this list you ask? Because Cary Grant does some excellent drunk driving.

8.) Death Race 2000

Some cool, goofy ’80s Autorama-looking rides. But the creepiest thing is the strange opening credits drawing and music. What the hell was that??

7.) Joy Ride & Jeepers Creeper

Both rip-off Duel for the opening third of these movies. And both do it better. Too bad they (sigh) start pulling over off the road and stepping out of their cars. Mistake. I hate it when that happens. However, the best double feature you can watch at home since the crazy man-rabbit combo you served up with Donnie Darko and Sexy Beast.

6.) The Hitcher

Lots of cops get killed by C. Thomas Howell and the bad guy from Blade Runner. Or is it the other way around? Or is the guy from Blade Runner just a figment of the kids imagination and he’s a one-man country cop slaughterhouse? Maybe like the dude that didn’t exist in Fight Club!? Actually…no. I was hoping though. “It’s a drive-away,” the whiny little fuck keeps saying until he gets pennies on his eyelids. My favorite part is when the kid’s covered in gas and the match is falling and he can’t catch his breath ’cause of the fumes.

5.) Duel

Cool, evil, very oily truck. But it’s a made-for-TV movie so fuck it.

4.) The Getaway (1972) & The Getaway (1993)

Both versions have great moments when the movie stops cold so the hero can shotgun the shit out of a cop car. So satisfying they had to do it twice. Also, in both versions, the movies stop so the leading men can smack their co-stars (wives in real life) across the face. What’s up with that, seriously? And I think McQueen hits his wife twice. But Alec Baldwin gets hit back to make it all empowering to any woman who took a wrong turn and sat through a Peckinpah remake, so I’m leaning towards the original here. Little trivia you should already know: written by Walter Hill, the man responsible for many an existential masterpiece, including number three on the big list up there, The Driver, and therefore, Drive.

3.) Smokey and the Bandit

You know, it’s not that bad. Good wrecks and some great crunched metal. Buford T. Justice’s magically shrinking cop car is also quite funny to 10-year-old me. But it’s a comedy and therefore it makes you long for the destruction that reached biblical proportions in The Blues Brothers if you’re gonna waste time watching one of those.

2.) Vanishing Point

Very symbolic ‘n’ shit. Dude takes “speed” then decides to drive from Denver to San Francisco in fifteen hours for no good reason. Get it? Speed? Get it?? And he’s helped by a psychic DJ named Super Soul. True story. Could happen. And guess what? Another Dodge Challenger. Remember it from Bullit? But the problem with this movie is the bastard keeps stopping and getting out of his car. Okay, there’s a naked chick on a motorcycle during “Mississippi Queen,” but if I wanted to see that, I wouldn’t have watched a movie called Vanishing Point. Perfect ending though.

1.) Two-Lane Blacktop

I know this movie is about a race because that’s what the nameless (damn I love it when they go nameless) characters said. I think. But, for some reason, I can’t remember ever seeing this race occur. And I remember some mumbling about tearing out the heater in the heroes’ car to make it faster, but I can’t remember seeing that either. And I remember some tough talk from the rival driver every time they stop for gas, but no one seems to be very upset about anything. But I do remember the cars. Bulky Chevy 150, the last thing you’d expect to be racing, and a GTO, driven by a guy the credits call “GTO” so we won’t spend too much time thinking about it. You might remember him better as the guy that fell in love with the severed head of Alfredo Garica (Tarantino totally owes his scene from Sin City to that movie). Probably the slowest chase flick ever made. And, for some strange reason, against all of my instincts, one of my favorite movies.

Some Crazy Cars That Won My Heart!

1.) The Car

Big limousine-looking beastly thing with red-tinted windows. Driven by, uh, The Devil. Actually had a huge impact on me as a child. Because I thought we were rooting for The Car until the end when the Highlander-looking tongue waggling explosion shows up and the Car loses. The equivalent of the Black Sox Scandal on my young mind.

2.) The Wraith

Early Charlie Sheen classic. Rips off High Planes Drifter (some early reviews mocked it as High Planes Dragster or High Lanes Drifter. Oh, snap!) Audrey from Twin Peaks doing her Audrey thing two years early (Between this and Agent Cooper in The Hidden, I think Lynch was watching a lot of shitty ’80s movies). See, Charlie comes back to life as a combination space-alien/Dodge Interceptor concept car. Jesus Chrysler, another friggin’ Chrysler?! Well, at least it ain’t a Challenger. So, anyway, the car, er, Charlie hunts down and kills the lamest gang since the home intruders in Weird Science. However, some very impressive fiery wrecks rolling down mountains. Too bad the car and Charlie look a lot like Tron.

3.) Christine

Stephen King and John Carpenter rip off The Car but do enough cool stuff with the idea to be forgiven. The ’58 Plymouth Fury pulsing and heaving and creaking to restore itself is almost orgasmic. Best Cronenberg moment not in one of his movies. He must have hit himself in the forehead and exclaimed, “I could have had a V-8!” I can’t get enough of that joke. Speaking of cargasms…

4.) Crash

Don’t get this confused with the lame-ass Oscar-bait snoozefest of the same name. The cars in this movie kill, sure. But that’s an accident. They’re just misunderstood. They really just want to fuck.

The Best Chases With Things That Don’t Count!

9.) The Long Riders

Blatant Wild Bunch rip-off when the James Gang rides out of town after their botched robbery. Slo-mo bullet wounds and backward bullet noises are impressive as hell though. But, yeah, not really cars, huh? That scene is better than most movies though. Especially this one.

8.) Hard Rain

The jet-ski chase through the flooded school. Who wouldn’t want to do that? There’s a kind of madness to that scene that I think is great. Any time you flood a house, strange things happen. Try it. Deep Blue Sea had sharks in and out of a flooded lab, opening doors, learning how to use ovens. Hell, I was waiting for a shark to get on a phone and try to sucker a pizza man. And Dagon has people reverting back down the evolutionary ladder and swimming through their flooded homes. And someone should make a movie called Hard Black Rain to cause even more confusion when I went to rent these movies.

7.) True Lies

The horse chasing the motorcycle through the hotel. That was a weird chase, huh? But the best scene is really the two Harrier jets taking out the terrorists on that bridge. Pilot: “Will the nukes go off if we take out the bridge?” Schwartzenegger: “No.” Then he turns and does this guilty shrug to Tom Arnold. That was funny shit. At least it was back when I saw it. The movie also scores points for featuring a loving kiss in front of a mushroom cloud. We’re getting off track here, I think.

6.) Runaway Train

Kurosawa wrote this script for this story about a doomed train with escaped convicts heading for a dead-end. Lots and lots of satisfying arguments and twitchy eyelids. And an oddly touching fade-out ending and Richard III quotes.

5.) Face-Off

I’d kind of forgotten about the boat chase until I heard someone angrily describe the end of this movie as “the director jerking off onto my face.” So any chase that gets that kind of reaction has to be mentioned somewhere. I do like how they hovered in the air for about a year after the boats exploded though. Points removed though for Cage’s idiotic explanation of the movie’s title: “I want to rip his face…pause…off.” Shut the fuck up.

4.) Black Rain

Nice little dirt-bike chase through that farm. Ends with a solid fist fight that shows how American right hands and cheap shots from a flabby, over-the-hill Michael Douglas can defeat that sneaky kung-fu any day.

3.) The Abyss

Decent little sub chase ending with the wonderfully mustachioed bad guy getting smashed from the water pressure like an empty beer can. Question: How did they not predict a guy named “Coffey” was gonna get “the shakes”? Bonus points for Crazy Coffey elbowing that tape player when the country music comes on in the middle of his chase. I’m right there with ya, buddy.

2.) Ben-Hur

Ever hear about the Roman transsexual? Ben Her? Get it? Sorry. But not since high school boys cranked Queen’s “We Will Rock You” before their football games have straight males been so excited and confused at the same time. You’ve all seen the chariot race by now. But how about that rowing scene though? That’s a chase scene, too. At least I think they were being chased. But they weren’t allowed to look since there aren’t any windows in the bowels of a ship.

1.) Darkman

The last word in superheroes hanging off a helicopter, bouncing and running on the tops of traffic still makes me smile to this day. I did it again today. Smile, I mean.

There. The list may change as I remember more of them. But I promised Flywheel more wheels this year, and I did my part. Stayed tuned for Issue Two, where some other writers burn some rubber for us, too. For now I’m thinking this list is done. Unless you read this ten years later from now. Boom! Time travel.

Coming soon, kids! The greatest fist-fights of all time! Again, computer bullshit is instantly disqualified. Maybe that high-wire stuff where people float around for no reason, too. Sick of it. Sick of that like I’m sick of tires screeching on dust. Like right now…

seriously this does not make any noise

Okay, so we all know Facebook makes people awful, myself included. This is understood. But what is amazing is that it is apparently able to corrupt birthdays, too! Sure birthdays were always suspect anyway (and kinda pro-life if you think about it), so they probably had it coming. But it’s actually not the birthdays themselves that I’ve put under the microscope. Impossibly, it’s an even more innocent target. Birthday wishes! No, not the wish you make when you blow out the candles, but that nice little platitude when someone just says “Happy birthday.” See, The Book Of Faces tells all 9,356 of your “friends” when your birthday is, then it waits and twirls its mustache to see what you’ll do with that information. I myself have not so secretly bowed out of the process, but I can now confess that I did it for more ominous reasons.

Using spreadsheets, graphs, pie charts, and mostly just beautiful handwritten doodles that would have make Jack Torrence proud, I have compiled for you the “Happy Birthday” activity of 600+ Facebook users and their users and their users to see what trends emerged. And holy fuck were they embarrassing. Maybe not as embarrassing as pulling a conspicuous public vaguebook, humblebrag, or Santorum, but still pretty bad.. For you, I mean, not for me. I haven’t been embarrassed since 1979. (see below. no, below that. way down there…)

this movie made perfect sense

Now, I had to throw out the birthdays of relatives because it screwed up the data. Also, significant others were removed from the data pool. That still left plenty of tasty statistics though. First off, while looking at the charts, you can see the disturbing tendency for the vast majority of the “happy birthdays” to go up the food chain. People were much more likely to wish “happy birthday” on a boss, editor, hopeful boss, hopeful editor, hopeful agent, former professor slash potential letter of recommendation, famous person profile, fake famous person profile, formerly famous person profile, etc. (and the usual disproportionate number of comments and “likes,” too, of course, something that the mercifully short-lived Facebook real-time ticker revealed so clearly. You wouldn’t have believed those ass kissers! Wait, what do you mean that horrific ticker’s back?). But how can I be sure this was happening you ask? “Objection! That’s conjecture!” you say? Maybe. But when I laid out all these doodles on the floor with the help of my lab assistant Nate (who is well-versed in cutting out meaningful newspaper clippings and creating his share of Madman Shrines like you see in the movies), we may have made some leaps. I’m not talking leaps like you’d find on the patented Jump To Conclusions mat. Reasonable leaps. That’s why some of you are cringing right now. But that’s why we put on the Googles and take the journey for you. So you don’t have to.

So, like I was saying, it became clear to me and my team of scientists that people will wish “happy birthday” to people they perceive as more successful than themselves. In fact, some people exclusively wished happy birthday to only these individuals, even forgoing celebrating the birth of their own mother or father. In at least three instances, it even turned out to be the father’s last birthday. Whoops. Not that the fast-track-to-success subject noticed. But in spite of my tireless searching, I was unable to find a test case where someone’s father was also a hopeful employer (or even an uncle and hopeful employer, which would have created an irresistible Secret of My Success-type scenario), so who knows how that would have affected the results. But yeah, the amazing glut of suckassery was illuminating! And checking my pie charts, I found some even stranger trends emerging. Behold!

Of course, I had to take in account that there may be people boycotting internet birthday duties for more noble reasons than my own study, people who can’t in good conscience take that insufferable bow at the end of the day to thank everyone for repeating the same two words over and over, people who abstain simply because they would have to say “happy birthday” to six goddamn people every 24 hours on their computers. Admittedly, there were these outliers. However, when two or three birthdays fell on the same day and had shared “friendships,” this proved to be a gold mine! How would someone react? Would they exert the same effort and levels of creativity on all fronts? Coming up with a unique “happy birthday” is hard enough once a year in the real world, let alone three every morning on Facebook? Who would earn the coveted picture and clever caption, the smug dismissal of the ceremony combined with their begrudging well-wishing? The effort would be Herculean. I was on the edge of my balls! And how could they keep this up every single day? The effort to be clever during three wedding toasts a year has killed lesser men. Who would be the unlucky person at the bottom of the food chain, with just the dreaded “Have a good one” hanging like a limp dick on their virtual wall? Well, this was where I put my one semester of psychology in 1988 to use (I am waving an ominous-looking manila envelope in the air right now). And my results definitely show that the level of effort always depends on perceived slights, jealously, vendettas, and petty grudges.

So, yeah, I have no birthday listed on Facebook. Try it. Delete yours, too. It feels good. Without a birthday, you’re, like, immortal. You’ll feel like a Highlander. Either that or make sure that you only type meaningless birthday wishes on the Facebook pages of people that share the exact same socioeconomic level as you. If you’re unsure, I have the information if you need it. And before I forget, if you didn’t say happy birthday to my fiancée last Thursday, you’re braver than I am and now probably on her shit list. Don’t worry about me though. My shit lists and regular lists remain indistinguishable.

No, seriously. You’re saying “Happy Birthday” every single day of your life now because of Facebook. Stop. You sound like a crazy person.

p.s. It was the summer, 1979. I had a birthday party where I insisted on having an R2-D2 cake (better than pie, according to the earlier chart), complete with a metallic-looking head. So my mom made the head out of these silver, sugary BB’s which looked great, but were kind of inedible unless you had a mouth like a wood chipper. But I wanted the head. I insisted on the entire head actually, pouting that everyone else should be forced to eat from the robot’s midsection where those stupid tools popped out. Smugly, I took my first bite and instantly realized my mistake, crunching, crunching through tears like I was eating a handful of gravel. I don’t even remember my wish. Silver medal indeed.

I’d eat the hell out of that cake now though. Those were probably baby teeth.

(The only thing I regret doing was claiming I was an editor. However, I did almost convince myself!)

So check out this strange tale of unrejection, as well as my attempt to put a block quote within a block quote (sort of like parenthesis within parenthesis, or Marty meeting himself in Back To The Future (in other words, a false alarm)). Anyway, Mr. Merrigan explains it all. An excerpt:

“On a couple comment threads on Facebook and elsewhere, David reminded me to revise The Oath, send it back in. I was flattered, again, that he remembered. But I still couldn’t do it. Then earlier this week I got this note from him:

‘I have an idea unprecedented in the history of small-press submissions. I am UNREJECTING your story The Oath. i feel it needs work, but i’m an editor, damn it. and i will do this work with my own two hands. Please send it back stat for publication in our December issue.’

To say I was stoked would be massive understatement. I believe the words “fuck” and “yeah” were mentioned in close succession. That a story so personal to me could trip off something in someone else, for months, means there must be something to this story…”

So, yeah. The December issue of Flywheel is getting weirder and weirder. Want in?

Update:

So I’ve gotten quite a few emails asking me what changed my mind about Mr. Merrigan’s “The Oath” and I was gonna talk about how I suspected there was this more personal aspect to its wild premise that he verified in our correspondence that I want to coax more into the light and that I wondered if the same relentless repetition from reading it aloud to another editor hurt its chances initially because the page ain’t the same as the ears…and all of that is true, but not exactly honest. So here’s how it went down:

I kept thinking about the story after we broke up.

I couldn’t bear thinking about the story talking to any other magazines.

I asked the story to come back, hinting that maybe I was wrong, that I needed to change instead of the story.

I still hope we can meet somewhere in the middle and make it work.

Oh, yeah. There’s a scene in it where someone eats a raw lizard. (but, damn it, the attraction cannot be based solely on the physical)

Time to give or take a beating on a beach, the sixteenth most painful location to be injured, the fifth worst place for a foot chase, and the number-one worst spot to attempt any sort of accurate chalk outline of a corpse.

Okay, so you probably don’t need peer pressure to get on your keyboard, but I certainly do. And this past week over at Do Some Damage, there was this amazing story prompt to kick of the first sweaty days of summer. Steve Weddle of Needle Magazine fame (their new summer issue just came out, by the way, and it’s a must-grab, as well as the new DSD collection just in time for Father’s Day) had this to say:

“Lee Smith (and/or other folks) said that there are two kinds of stories:

1. A stranger comes to town.
2. Somebody takes a trip.

With that in mind, how about we do us up a little writing challenge here. Anywhere from 500 words to 5,000. Post links here. Deadline two weeks from today. Your spin on summer vacation given the crime fiction treatment, noir at the beach house, or beatings at the beach…”

So, over here at the Wheel of Flies, we hadn’t had a blog postal in a bit and thought this was a great way to force ourselves to do some typing. Our poetry editor Amanda “Does Your Dog Bite” Hempel claims she’s got something brewing on the brain, and, hopefully, this will guilt her into finishing soon. But in the meantime, here’s my contribution to a Beating At The Beach story, which was jump-started both by this story prompt and an attempt to do a beach-like photo shoot before I was done. But to illustrate a beachy noir, we had to find the next best thing in the middle of Kentucky. So we ended up sneaking around the volleyball court on the U of L campus after we secured a merkin-like wig to transform our nonfiction editor and sometime photographer Amy Lueck into a saucy old biddy. And then an interesting chicken-or-the-egg thing start to happen. With her alligator earrings and 10 pounds of bracelets and boots and what not, I started writing the story around the pictures instead of the other way around. It was a fun and different way to do it.

Oh, yeah, our freelancer Nate also took some horrifying pictures of my dead lizard last year like some kind of freak, so I’d been looking for any possible chance to use them. Actually, while I have you here, you should know that he didn’t just “take pictures” of my leopard gecko after he croaked. He asked if he could please take home the deceased Sir Pizza (actually, that should have been his name, but he ended up with a much more pretentious Middle Age moniker) so that he could put him on his porch in this suspended coffin/plant holder thing that kept out the birds but not the insects so that the bones would be picked clean and he could make a friend or a necklace or something. Yes, ladies, Nate wants to meet…you! So long story long, here’s the result of this weekend’s creative stew. Sorry it’s likely a mess since I did it so fast, but it was fun as hell to type:

Is That My Sandwich In There?

by djk

It was one of those real heavy, holiday-season, Oscar-bait crime dramas up on the screen, and the theater was packed. We wouldn’t even have gone to see it, but we’d missed a plane coming back from a friend’s wedding in Florida (the summer when there were way too many weddings) and we had four hours to kill. We walked into a cinema next door to the airport, a great money-making location that took advantage of weary layovers, and asked for two tickets to the longest piece of shit they had. Jesse tried to duck me by hiding in the bar, but I drug him reluctantly away from the local news, which turned out to be better than the movie actually. Florida news was crazy. They had gator alerts at the top of the hour instead of weather reports.

I barely remember the flick we watched since we only saw a third of it before the outburst, but I do know it was a murder mystery.

It happened during this scene where a frantic father is trying to break through a protective line of police to see if his daughter is the dead body inside some bear pit in a zoo. The hard-ass dad is fighting with these cops and screaming over and over, “Is that my daughter in there?! Is that my daughter in there?! Is that my daughter in there?!”  And there’s this pileup of about 625 uniformed cops restraining him as he screams in anguish at the sky, then the camera soars above the scene and the music swells and then…

Then Jesse leans over to me, almost dumping my Dr. Pepper, and whispers serious as hell:

“You know what would make that scene very different emotionally? What if the dad was screaming, ‘Is that my sandwich in there’ instead?”

I stared at him a minute and tried to stifle a laugh and blew snot out my nose. His comment didn’t make much sense, and probably wasn’t that funny, but both of us started snickering uncontrollably, and we could actually feel the anger of the crowd rising around us like a tsunami.

If you’ve ever thought of a perfectly hilarious comment while watching a movie in a theater and couldn’t help but sharing it with an auditorium full of strangers, you would have quickly realized that no one wants to hear it. No one. No matter how clever you know you were. There are few venues in the world where an outburst is less welcome. Think of it as church with arm rests, whistling through Twizzlers instead of faking the words to hymns.

But after some hateful glares and a “Shhh!” or two, we got it under control. And we were doing fine until the movie came to the scene where the father has to identify his daughter’s body in the morgue. They pull back the sheet, and her face is twisted forever in a grimace of pain, and the father mutters:

“Yes, that’s my daughter.”

And right then, me and Jesse look at each other, both knowing we’re, of course, thinking the exact same thing. Instead we had heard the manly, distraught father say, clear as day and solemn as a sermon:

“Yes, that’s my sandwich.”

We both lost it, barking loud laughter that made my stomach ache as if I’d dry heaved all night or did a thousand sit-ups. Angry moviegoers muttered and tisked and stomped out the door to demand our ejection, and we were still convulsing even as flashlight-wielding security manhandled us through the exit stage left of the screen. The sunlight that blasted onto the furious faces in those seats made everything worth it.

I still think they got lucky. Who knows what would have happened if we’d made it to the second act, to the inevitable autopsy scene where the medical examiner would start cutting a perfect diagonal line through the center of that sandwich, something any coroner or restaurant owner will tell you maximizes the exposure of the contents. If we’d made it that far into the movie, I might have shit myself holding in the giggles.

Outside we heard our plane was delayed, so we tried to eat up more of the clock by heading back to the beach. We decided it would be fun to shake sand out of our asses when the TSA put us in the airport microwaves and grabbed our balls.

We never saw the kid follow us out.

*** 

Back on the street with the Florida anvil of sunshine on our shoulders, right when we could smell the ocean but still couldn’t see it, we came across a crowd around an alligator that had wandered into a supermarket parking lot. I saw an old biddy, way too old to be wearing cowboy boots and a mini-skirt, and I asked her what was up.

“I don’t know,” the Biddy said. “It must have walked a mile inland. Maybe it smelled the deli counter.”

“Does this happen a lot?” I asked.

“About twice a day,” the Biddy shrugged, about twenty bracelets crashing down to her elbows.

Me and Jesse looked at each other in shock, and she laughed.

“Just kidding, suckers! Stick around though. They’ll be by to shoot it any second.”

“Wait, what? They’re gonna kill it?!” Jesse was horrified.

“Of course. How do you think they make boots!” she said, punctuating her point by tapping her heel on the asphalt. I chewed on my bottom lip and checked my watch. Jesse looked up and down the street, then stared at me with his hands on his hips.

Five minutes later, Jesse’s trying to drag an angry gator by the tail, the toothy top half of the beastie whiplashes around his feet, and I’m screaming for a cab. The cab was for me, not for Jesse and the gator. I was gonna leave both of them. I knew we were in over our heads. We’d only made it a block past the supermarket and could just barely hear the beach, but I knew it was too far.

That’s when the knuckles found my jaw, and I was suddenly looking straight up in the air, wondering what happened. When my vision cleared, I saw the kid. A wiry little bastard, cherry-red fists as balled up as his forehead. He grabbed my neck and I truly thought he was going to climb up my shirt and hit me again. Nose to nose, breathing in my face, I smelled it and figured it out.

Popcorn.

He’d come from the movie. The little fucker had actually followed us halfway to the Everglades, angry that we’d disrupted his flick, just to punch one of us in the grill. And now he was standing on his tip-toes promising even more. He was little, and he was skinny, but his veins were out, and he clearly had a righteous cause. Sort of like Jesse. I didn’t want any part of it. I turned to my friend fighting with his dinosaur.

“Trade ya?”

Jesse looked down at the hissing, snapping gator between his legs, then back at the kid.

“No way,” Jesse said, and he started trying to drag it again, sweat pouring off his nose in an unbroken stream. That’s when the creature locked onto his ankle, and Jesse screamed. He sat down hard, trying to kick himself loose as blood seeped through the stripes in his tube sock. I would have laughed if I didn’t have my hands full.

I tried to grab the kid and calm him down, but he’d lost his shirt at some point and was about as slippery as bar of soap. And he was punching me at will. And this kid bit, too. I watched him catch a mouthful of my tricep and thought, “he’s gonna brand me for the rest of my life. I’m gonna have to tell everyone at every party all about how a kid weighing a buck ‘o two kicked my ass.” So I grabbed his face like a bowling ball, thumb in for the fish hook, middle finger in a nostril, and I flipped him onto his back, and someone in the crowd grunted their approval.

At some point, I caught a glimpse of the old biddy sitting on a speed bump with her cowboy boots off, painting her toenails, every so often glancing up and cheering for someone. I pouted as I worried it wasn’t for me, and I tried even harder.

But both me and Jesse were losing interest fast. It reminded me of this fight Jesse got in at graduation. How it started in the living room, went through a cheap table, down the hall, knocking over some framed Springsteen albums on the wall, then ended up in the bathroom, where Jesse’s head cracked open the PVC trap under the sink. He needed six stitches, but his mom found her engagement ring. We measured it later. That fight lasted thirty feet.

This one lasted a thousand and one.

*** 

Things we learned on vacation. Don’t tug on Superman’s wheelchair. Don’t spit into the wind. Don’t try to drag an alligator by the tail. And don’t fuck with someone’s movie.

No bullshit, we all made it to the beach. The sun was going down, and I could barely see through the sweat and the blood, but I got lucky when we all hit the sand and I caught the kid’s head on one of those dog shit stations and had the upper hand for the split second I needed. I used my weight to steamroll him while I tried to sit on his chicken arms.

“What the hell?” I had time to ask.

“That was my sister in there,” he said.

I still don’t know what he meant. In the movie? Was that a true story? No way. I had another theory. I’d heard about violence in theaters before, and when people are broke, I truly believe that they’ll attack you, even shoot your ass, for interrupting a movie because for them it’s a one-time event.

If you can’t afford to come back, that means what’s on the screen is as fleeting as life. I’ve been in fights over way less than that.

Jesse’s alligator had calmed down, went into some sort of reptilian shutdown. And Jesse was actually petting it with its head still locked on his ankle.

“Surf and turf!” someone shouting nonsensically. And that’s about the time we were flooded with uniforms. I gave some trouble to a chubby cop in a crew cut. The kid tangled up the rest of them. And at some point, a zookeeper took a shot. In the papers, they swore they were aiming for the gator, but the kid took the dark square in his back, right next to my handprint.

I’m pretty sure there was a cheer from the crowd, but when I looked around I saw nothing but blue and red lights in my face. Even the old woman and her red toenails were gone, and without a crowd, I wanted to get on that plane more than anything.

I couldn’t believe the dart got him, to be honest. At that point, I fully expected the kid to catch the dart in his teeth, chew it up, then swallow.

Later that night, we sat on a curb under the streetlights, answering the same questions with the same answers, never to anyone’s satisfaction, watching the Keystone Cops and paramedics work on the kid in vain. When we were finally free to go, I was surprised they didn’t load the comatose gator into the ambulance by mistake.

***

When me and Jesse sat on the red-eye, more like the “red-ass,” slumped as low in our seat as the stewardess would allow, sand working its way into the rivers of cuts on our jaw lines, chins, elbows, and backsides, we both thought about our respective battles. At least I know I did. I hoped Jesse at least was worried about that gator ending up as boots because he had it easy. I was faced with one undeniable truth.

I had fucked with some kid’s movie, and it had stopped his heart.

The movie on the plane was terrible, but we didn’t say a word.

"Chaucer" by Nathan Lamoreau

The first thing I notice upon approaching Mr. Kinder’s house is a gigantic metal sign in his front lawn that reads “KinderCare,” adorned with the logo of a popular chain of children’s learning centers. After some confusion at the door where I was mistaken for the pizza delivery man, I was ushered into the “Jungle Room” where Mr. Kinder regularly holds counsel. It is a Graceland of exotic animal sculptures, roadside trinkets, blinking Christmas tree lights, and framed photographs of the author fishing with Raymond Carver, Indian leg-wrestling Tobias Wolff, and shaking hands with various heads of state, including President Nixon and McGruff the Crime Dog.

The second thing I notice is, of course, his cats. Where Ernest Hemingway needed thirty-one cats to provide inspiration, Mr. Kinder needs only two. Christened “Tammie” and “Mister Jones,” they sit perched and attentive on either arm of his chair like fuzzy gargoyles, tails twitching and daring you to come any closer. (Later, I would realize they were actually a lot like the hellhounds in Ghostbusters. By this, I mean visitors could easily find themselves taking their place at his side while he scruffed their necks and held them up off the ground).

WHEEL: How did your cats get their names?

KINDER: Well, Mister Jones is named after George Jones, the old possum of country music pain. So, if you’ll just think for a moment, the source of his pain was Tammie. And that would be the cat who is now on your left shoulder, right shoulder. No, don’t move…

[Physically, Mr. Kinder resembles a combination of Cable Hogue and Captain Beefheart, and he speaks with an accent that is best described (depending on his level of impatience) as a combination of Jodie Foster's character in Silence of the Lambs and Anthony Hopkins'—particularly when he’s making fun of Jodie Foster’s character in Silence of the Lambs.]

WHEEL: I have to get one question out of the way first. Do you provide daycare here?

KINDER: Huh?

WHEEL: Outside in your yard, you have a sign from— 

KINDER: Oh, that. No, a former student of mine stole that as a gift for chairing his manuscript committee. I guess he thought it was funny or something to stick it in my goddamn yard. What was funny was seeing the video on the news of him wrestling the sign loose from the playground then running away with it under his arm. Write this down: If you ever want to get arrested, steal shit from a playground.

WHEEL: That is a huge sign. Why haven’t authorities confiscated it?

KINDER: Part of the plea deal. I keep the sign. They keep the student. Also, because of my last name, I’ve actually filmed a few short commercial spots for KinderCare.

WHEEL: Is this true?

KINDER: Yep! Stay up late enough and you’ll see ‘em. “KinderCare. Don’t Be Scared.” Enrollment fuckin’ tripled.

[The pizza finally arrives—thankfully, as I suspect he’s still waiting for me to produce one. Mr. Kinder quickly begins rolling up slices and consuming them two at a time. ("Doctors orders!" he insists.) I press on as he hands the delivery man a dog-eared copy of Tropic Of Cancer for a tip.]

WHEEL: Can we talk about your piece in the debut issue of Flywheel?

KINDER: Sure. I loved the photograph you paired it with, by the way. That is how I’ve always pictured ol’ Cindy’s “double-wide.”

WHEEL:  Yeah, our nonfiction editor was pulling double duty searching for just the right trailer, something she probably never thought we’d ask her to do.

KINDER: It is truly beautiful.

WHEEL: Speaking of Cindy Sinpatch, what was the inspiration for her, and for this particular piece of fiction?

KINDER: Fiction? What fiction? What does that even mean? This is a true story.

[Mr. Kinder begins to thumb through a dictionary to make his point.]

WHEEL:  But if this was a true story, then how—

KINDER: Okay sure, I may have added a word here or there, but this particular event was lifted directly from a newspaper article I was using to wrap salmon. The only meat I’m allowed these days, by the way. Besides gorilla.

WHEEL: Was this article from a tabloid?

KINDER: No. From the Wall Street Journal, Bernstein. What the hell do you think?

[He claps the dictionary closed under my nose, but not before I catch sight of the revolver-shaped outline cut into the pages.]

WHEEL: I meant, was it supposed to be a parody of a news report? In the story you refer to a Pittsburgh Pulp Exchange, but there doesn’t seem to be any record of any publication with that—

KINDER:  Boy, are you calling me a liar?

[It should be noted here that Mr. Kinder is quicker than he looks. By the time he gets to the word "liar," he has somehow twisted two pizza crusts around his knuckles, giving his fists the appearance of 4-ounce MMA gloves, presumably to cushion the blows he is now set to deliver on my cranium.]

WHEEL: No, no, no, I just—

KINDER: Hold on.

[Mr. Kinder spits what appears to be a tiny lemon seed into a nearby ashtray.]

WHEEL: Wait, what was that?

KINDER: Another stroke. My body shrugs them off at this point. I think I have one about every 45 minutes. I’m what they call a “medical miracle.” Guinness stopped by yesterday actually.

WHEEL: Is that a world’s record or something?

KINDER: Huh? No, I mean Guinness the beverage. Another endorsement deal. But I told them my contract with WhupAss Energy Drink was iron-clad for another decade, at least.

WHEEL: So, let’s get back to this actual news report about a flying saucer.

KINDER: Yeah, it was a real bona fide article, documenting a real-life event. In fact, that line about the mournful sound of Milk Duds? That was in the original. I suspect that writer’s wasted talent was crying out in the darkness with that beautiful little nugget. So I stole it.

WHEEL: What else have you been working on since your retirement from teaching?

KINDER: Oh, this little thing…

[Mr. Kinder drops a manuscript the size of The Starr Report on my shoe. As I reach down to check for broken toes, I notice it is The Starr Report.]

WHEEL: Are you reading this?

KINDER: Sort of. [pause] No.

WHEEL: I don’t understand.

KINDER: I’d heard there was a 666-page document detailing former President Clinton’s blowjob, and I wanted to make sure it really existed. I thought it was a bit…short-sighted. Read like The Da Vinci Code. Oh, here it is…

[Mr. Kinder drops an even larger manuscript on my other shoe. I am relieved that the swelling will be symmetrical.]

WHEEL: Poetry, eh?

KINDER: I aint’ scared of it.

WHEEL: Besides a new interest in poetry, could we also talk about your newfound love of punctuation, specifically exclamation points?

KINDER: Don’t ask about asking.  Just ask. Don’t be scared.

WHEEL: Okay. Why all the exclamation points?

KINDER: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

WHEEL: You have 66 exclamation marks in your Flywheel piece. 73 if you include the title.

KINDER: I didn’t put those in there.

WHEEL: But if you didn’t then who—

KINDER: On occasion, because of my dotage, I’ll send a student to make copies for me on campus. Sometimes they get excitable in their youthfulness and amazement, and a bit of that can end up on the page.

WHEEL: On the page that they’re photocopying.

KINDER: Hell, yeah! I’ve sent them kids out for groceries before, asked for something as simple as a tub of peanut butter. And they come back with some sort of insanity where the jelly is already mixed up with the peanut butter in the jar. It’s like a ship in a bottle! But nobody asks how that happened, do they? Think about that. Peanut butter and jelly together. In the jar. Like this…[Mr. Kinder hold up his fingers and jams them together like the children’s church-steeple game. I expect him to finish with "And here’s all the people," but he just cracks his knuckles in a threatening manner instead. The tails on his flanking cats suddenly expand into pine cones, and a growl rises in someone’s throat.]

WHEEL: Oh. Okay, just one last question. It’s about the ending of your story. What starts out as farce becomes, by the end, something much more emotional, even sentimental. Is this technique intentional or did you find yourself softening toward your character and their situation by the end?

[Obviously long done with our interview, Mr. Kinder stands, claps my shoulder, and smiles. But before he releases me, a small, almost imperceptible squeeze sends a charge through my spine. This is when I realize that he's draped himself in Christmas tree flamingos and somehow illuminated them without an electrical outlet in sight. And goddamn it if after that squeeze I didn’t find myself unable to resist ending this article, and every sentence after, with the first exclamation points I’ve used since January 26th, 1986! This was the day the Space Shuttle blew up, by the way!! An incident that was reported by newscasters as a "major malfunction" without any emotion whatsoever!!!]

Before Chuck Kinder became a full-fledged fictioneer, whose work reflects his personal philosophy that everything one writes should be as literally true as the Bible, he worked variously as a coal miner, moonshiner, bartender, bouncer, bandit, prize-fighter, circus performer, tango teacher, white-water river guide, professional cook, cowboy, and itinerant college professor. He is the author of the novels Snakehunter (Alfred A. Knopf), whose Gnomon Press paperback is still in print; The Silver Ghost (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich), which was reprinted in 2004 by Fazi Editore in Italy; and Honeymooners: A Cautionary Tale (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), a 2001 New York Times Notable Book, which has been reprinted in Italy (where it became a best-seller), France, Spain, and most recently Israel. His most recent book is a redneck noir, pulp romance meta-memoir titled Last Mountain Dancer: Hard-earned Lessons in Love, Loss, and Honky-Tonk Outlaw Life, which was published in 2004, reissued in quality-paperback by Carroll & Graf in 2005, and reprinted in 2010 by Fazi Editore in Italy.

Oh, and in case you’ve been just dying to <a href=”submissions/”>send us work</a>, note that we’re once again accepted flash fiction and poetry submissions. Bring it.