Category: Guest Authors

When I was ten, I wanted a Red Ryder for Christmas.
Miss Shields made us write a Christmas theme. I wrote five pages on the glories of the Red Ryder. She gave me a C, said I’d put my eye out.
Santa Claus at Higbee’s Department Store? Same thing.
For weeks, I dropped “subtle” hints around the house. Must’ve driven Schwartz, Flick, and Kissel nuts at school. I was obsessed.
But when Christmas came, I got it!
Of course, within ten minutes, I had put my eye out. But I loved my Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Icepick.

Walter walked the studio grounds, lost in concentration.
He needed a new character. Mickey had been packing theatres for years – not bad for a lousy cartoon short! – but rentals had begun to sag.
Face it. The Mouse was a victim of his own success. Originally a mischievous trickster, he was now good-natured and bland. Booooring.
What he needed was a foil. A character with a rotten disposition, to create dramatic tension. But who?
He almost tripped on the duck’s carcass. It lay by the side of the pond, half-eaten.
Two months later, /Morty Maggot/ opened to rave reviews.

Eddie walked into Clancy’s, looking for an empty seat. There – next to that platinum blonde with the Cosmo! Maybe she wasn’t a Working Girl. Riiight.
“Ah wouldn’t sit down theah effen Ah wuz yew.”
The warning came from the end of the bar. Strange little guy, clad in buckskins, sporting a coonskin cap, reeking of pine.
“I’ll sit wherever the fuck I want, Mark Trail.”
With that, Eddie slid onto the barstool. It shattered into flinders, dumping him unceremoniously to the floor.
“H-h-how’d you know?”
“Name’s Dan’l Boone, and Ah know more about B’ar Stools than jest about anybody.”

Abdul Abulbul Amir is revered for bringing East and West together.
Back in 2052, Amir was an impoverished cleric living in Dearborn. Many of his brethren denounced America. They could only envision a future of struggle, Islam versus the powers of the West. Theirs was a bipolar world of Muslim and Infidel, of which only one could be right.
But Amir had a vision.
“Surely, a country that can make a dessert this wonderful is no Great Satan!”
And so, he began preaching a new message of love for America from a true Religion of Peace:
“Imam and Apple Pie!”

Sometimes, after dinner,
I crave a Berliner –
That noble and perfect dessert.
But a gluttonous sinner
Will bite his Berliner,
An act that may cause it to squirt –
Take a napkin and pin ‘er
Between your Berliner
And you. It will keep off the dirt.
Then enjoy your Berliner
(It won’t make you thinner –
Your diet it’s likely to hurt.)
You might want your Berliner
Washed down with some gin, or
Some human breast milk – you pervert!
I feel like a winner
When I eat my Berliner
Without getting jam on my shirt.
After dinner? Berliner!

There’s a Chassidic guy
With a patch on his eye
And a wad of gum to chew
You’ll forget your troubles
When you see kosher bubbles
They call him Bazooka Jew.
Oh, he’s used to stares
When he’s saying his prayers
‘N’ blowin’ bubbles, too –
Working his jaw
Like a mother-in-law,
My buddy, Bazooka Jew.
The rabbi said “It’s pretty weird –
But the gum doesn’t stick to his beard!”
He might be in Dallas
A-schleppin’ his tallis,
Or Fort Worth – or Timbuktu.
And now and again,
When I hear “Pop – amen!”
I know it’s Bazooka Jew.

Manny gripped one end of the elastic between his teeth and pulled. When the vein in the crook of his left arm looked just right, he stabbed the spike in. Pressing the plunger home, he sighed with pleasure. Aaaaahhhh.
Suddenly, “Pomp and Circumstance” blared. Rough hands lifted him, propelling him across a hastily-erected stage. A rolled-up piece of paper was thrust into his hands. After a quick handshake from a black-robed dignitary, he was booted off the platform, landing in a refuse can.
He unfurled the paper. Who knew that graduating from marijuana to hard drugs would be so formal?

Bradley sat back, Mai-Tai in his hand, looking out at the ocean seventy yards from his deck. He smiled.
He had purchased the beach house just a month ago. He hadn’t been sure if he’d be able to swing it, but then this listing popped up. Prime oceanfront, it was a steal at twice the price.
Low in the sky, a mottled gibbous moon hung, making the water sparkle.
A low moaning sound made his head snap around. An army of many-tentacled horrors was shambling up the beach. They held out their scabrous, pitted palps towards him.
Yeah. Some steal.