TRASH THEATER, Part 2

PARENTS

81 minutes. A Bob Balaban Film Written by: Christopher Hawthorne Directed by: Bob Balaban (Psssst. Here’s why they call it a Bob Balaban Film. You see, no one had anything else to do with it, really. A director, see, he’s like, well, you know, magic.) Produced by: Bonnie Palef Starring: Randy Quaid, Marybeth Hunt, Bryan Madorsky, Sandy Dennis, Kathryn Brody, and several pounds of raw meat and entrails. Food is the subject of our column this time. And child abuse. You might not think the two go together, but we’re going to show you differently, through the sweet metaphor of white collar cannibalism. You see, we, the USofA are a meat lovin’ people. Ain’t nothing better than throwing a slab of decaying cow meat on the pit or brewing up a big batch of Tex-Mex Chili, which, by the way, we are doing here at Trash Theater even as we dictate this to our secretary, Bambi. We should pause for a moment of introduction. Bambi just went to work for us this week. Her prison record and facial tattoos* do not concern us. Her inability to type more than fifteen words per half-hour is unimportant. You see, what she can do, is cook. And she’s not very smart, so she works cheap, almost as cheap as Gort, our non-human companion, whose idea of payment is a bag of pork skins.** So, say hello to Bambi. She’ll be handling our correspondence from here on out, and if you send anything we consider distasteful, then Bambi will bring her entire three-hundred and forty pounds and her taped axe handle over to your house and will shove said axe handle up that nasty little slot between your ass cheeks about as far as she can get it, and if her prison record is to be believed, she can shove that dude pretty goddamn far. Bless her ole Momma’s heart. And ass. Parents. This one takes place in the fifties, and it’s the nightmare version of Beaver Cleaver’s neighborhood. In fact, let’s make that Beaver Meat Cleaver’s neighborhood. It’s the Yankee version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, minus bad teeth and Drayton Sawyer’s Rolling Grill and dropped "g" letters on the ends of words that Yankees waste their time giving "g" letters to. Make a film about the South or Texas, you immediately got to have some retards with chainsaws and enough slobber to fill a mayonnaise jar and a whole bucket of missing "g"s on words, but you go up to Yankee land, well, you got to be careful, ‘cause the nuts don’t always look like nuts, and in the case of Parents, they’re pretty straight lace looking. Story is about a fine family of three. Mom and Dad and little Mike. They’re the kind of family would fit anywhere in any town. The boy is about twelve, subject to chronic nightmares, some triggered by mere adjustments made in his PJs, which goes to prove, you got to put your goddamn jammies on right. He has a bad dream, and his Mom explains it away with he hasn’t got his jammie shirt on. Wear your jammie shirt, those dreams will clear right up. Only they don’t. But he’s got his Dad to help him deal with the nightmares. He gets scared, Dad knows what to say. The Gestapo and the North Koreans ain’t got nothin’ on Dad. Mike, he’s scared of the dark, so Dad, very comforting, says, "Mike, the cellar is dark. Your room is dark. Everything is dark at night. Pretty soon we’ll turn off all the lights and it will be dark everywhere." Then good ole Dad points to his own head and sums it up. "You know, there’s one dark place you have to be very careful in. You know where that is? The human mind." And Dad leaves Mike in the dark, where he dreams of floods of blood and grisly horrors. The family has just moved from one Yankee place to another, following Dad’s job as a chemist to a local plant doing some bang up work on developing powerful defoliants. Dad, he don’t give a shit where he works. Fact is, he don’t give a shit about anything but prime cuts of meat and the resulting leftovers. At home, Dad, Mr. Laemie, is the king of his supremely honky castle. His wife, Mrs. Laemie, she knows how to please him. She’s a disconnected Betty Crocker, ever the perky homemaker, nose to the cook book. She stands behind her man, no matter how bad he fucks up their son. She’s willing to say, "Honey, don’t," to Dad when he messes with Mikey’s head, but that’s about the end of it. First day in a new school, Mikey’s teacher, Miss Baxter, asks the kids to share some new facts with the class. Mikey, he’s got a fact. He says: "Take a black cat and boil it in an oven. And you peel off the skin until the bones are cleaned off. And you chew on the bones and you’ll be invisible." Miss Baxter switches the subject, asks Mike if he has a cat or a puppy. Nope. No puppy or kitty at Mike’s house. Later on, Miss Baxter has the kids do portraits of their family. Mikey draws strange and savage pictures of three monsters completely covered in scribbily red lines. The teacher, she’s worried. Not only is this bad artwork, there’s something symbolic in all this. She’s been to school, see, and knows some things. Draw some red lines through monsters, there’s some bad shit brewing somewhere. Mikey gets sent to the social worker, Millie Dew, and they become friends. She’s certain Mikey’s home life is on the odd side. He has weird views on things. She speculates and Mikey goes home. Later on, Mikey’s dreams get worse, and one night he wakes up thirsty, goes into the kitchen for a drink of water, and finds his parents rolling and fucking on the floor. And we’re talking kinky loving too. Nothing so sissy as whipped cream and chocolate, rubber pants, dill pickles, and big rubber dicks with knobs on them. They’re rutting around in about twenty-five pounds of human guts. Dad is pissed. He was getting some pussy. Mom, she tries to gloss things over, tucks a dazed, little Mikey back in bed, Mikey having seen something he cannot explain on any level to anyone. Mikey’s nightmares become more intense, and boy are they visual. Like visions created by Dali while painting with an electric potato peeler up his ass. Mikey follows his Dad to work one day. He creeps around inside the building, discovers a whole batch of bodies. The ones used for tissue experiments. In comes his Dad. Mikey hides under a lab table while his Dad takes out the carving tools and carves some kidneys and loin roast off one of the stiffs. This fits in with Mike’s gut reactions that things are weird with Pop. He knows now why he always shunned the meat at the dinner table, why his instincts were against it, and why Dad was so agitated with him, called him the vegetarian in the family, way you’d say "the Ku Kluxer" or the "public masturbater." To Dad, this meat was sacred. A pot roast was like the Sacrament. Millie Dew, bless her stupid little heart, decides she wants to help Mikey, and she goes over to the Laemie house to snoop around. This is like a serious fuck up. She finds a body in the basement, and Mr. Laemie finds her. Millie, she gets cut, several times. That night, Millie, she’s swimming with the carrots and taters, and Miss Laemie announces proudly at the dinner table to her family, "I trimmed off all the fat." Things escalate. The boy is a disappointment to his father, who sees him as nothing better than a goddamn carrot gobbler. Dad has finally had enough, and in a rage grabs the kid and threatens him. Mom protests. After all, she kinda likes the boy. Dad, he’s not impressed with the protest. He’s logical. "It’s okay, Lilly, we’ll make another, and raise him right!" We don’t want to tell you much more. Some interesting silverware techniques follow, the Laemie house gets warmed up good, there’s a film ending connection with the old and good movie, The Bad Seed, and the Beave’s neighborhood is once again safe for democracy and legitimate pot roast. Some notes: Great food preparations scenes. Fab looking human meat loaf. (Yea!, pass the ketchup!) And, a real message. That’s right, we’re gonna say it. This isn’t just your regular cannibalism movie. It’s a valid metaphor for child abuse. The abused and confused child, tortured not so much physically, or sexually, but emotionally. Good ole Dad always making it unpleasant for him, talking about the dark, wanting him to eat human meat. Mom, turning her back, ignoring what’s going on to keep the husband happy, thinking that’s the ticket, chirping right along like she really is June Cleaver (thank goodness no one is). Parents has its funny moments, but ultimately, it’s a disturbing film. Not because it’s about cannibalism and has Sandy Dennis in it, but because it touches on real childhood fears. Such as Mom and Dad may not be just exactly right. We highly recommend this. But not to be watched with the kids, or staunch vegetarians. Dogs and cats may not like it either. Let’s wrap with appropriate snacks. Well, almost any meat product would fit right in with this. But, a three weenie sandwich on a white bread bun with mayonnaise and a side of macaroni and cheese seems like the ticket. Oh, and don’t forget the big ole tumbler of purple or red Kool-Aid. Okay, it has to happen. You begged. You pleaded. You insisted. So, here it is. We’re finally going to do it. We’re going to talk about, that’s right— The woman. The sweet potatoes. The asshole. You see, there’s this woman named Karen Finley, she’s like a performance artist or something. She’s relevant. She’s a feminist, and we got to tell you, we at Trash Theater have been moved by her. You see, to speak out against the horrible abuse against women, our stupid passion for consumerism, Karen Finley goes bravely where no woman has gone before. She gets up there on the stage and drops her trousers, and most everything else, and then, right there in front of God and everybody, she shoves canned yams (we prefer to call them sweet taters) up her asshole. We are not making this up. If ever a blow has been struck for art, feminism, and anti-consumerism, then Karen has struck it. Or shoved it. Or something. We were a little confused as to if she does this with the taters still in the can, or if she takes them out of the can before shoving, so we here at Trash Theater, following in the bold steps of Karen Finley her ownself, experimented. We found you shove those taters up your asshole while in the can, it hurts. We finally had to hammer the can to a point on one end, get some forty weight lube oil on the cans, and with one of us holding the salad spoons, the other bending over and Gort or Bambie shoving, we were able to get the whole goddamn can up there. The getting it out was some work, and required a couple sets of salad spoons and a rubber glove and a determined attitude. We found just taking them out of the can and shoving them up our assholes was a hell of a lot easier, though there is the waste involved. You leave them in the can before you shove them up there, make your statement, you can then wipe the can off, open it up and fix those taters in a casserole with baked marshmallows on top. Anyway, we now understand what Karen was trying to say, and we suggest you do not try this at home. We are, by the way, professionals. What we think is a crime is the fact that Karen Finley was turned down, get this, turned down, for a National Endowment of the Arts. The goddamn, scum-sucking pigs, the male chauvinist consumerist assholes. To think they wouldn’t want to give this lady money for her art, money to finance her lifestyle so she can go up on stage and stick yams, or even a goddamn watermelon, up her ass. What has happened to our love for the arts? Have we become so enraptured with AIDS research and help for the homeless that we don’t know a good artistic deal when we see it? We here at Trash Theater are fucking outraged. Come on National Endowment. Come around. Give her the grant. Let’s get Karen on down to the Piggly-Wiggly so she can get her a couple cans of canned yams and a striped rattlesnake watermelon. Remember, America is about life and liberty and the arts, and the freedom to publicly shove stuff up your asshole and get paid for it. In honor of Karen Finley, we here at Trash Theater are instituting the Trash Theater Canned Yam Award. This award will be given whenever we feel like it to those who deserve it. The envelope please. The Rue Morgue. All right. The Rue Morgue recently invited Andrew Vachss as a guest to their bookstore to do a signing, and right before his arrival, printed in their newsletter that they thought his novels pandered to child molesters. When numerous letters and phone calls poured in protesting these comments about Mr. Vachss, the Rue Morgue, in their ever fair and vigilant manner, printed excerpts of the letters in their newsletter and then went on to indicate that they had all been engineered by Mr. Vachss, despite the fact the letters came not only from friends and fans, but from colleagues and people Vachss had never heard of. The Rue Morgue just couldn’t accept the truth. They fucked up. They made stupid comments. They were rude to invite someone to a signing and then try and plant a note like that in their newsletter. People like that, they got to deserve a can of yams up the ass. So, we salute you with our first honorary Trash Theater Canned Yam Award, and no lube oil. So, Rue Morgue, our best wishes, and up your ass.   FOOTNOTES: *One, written in Latin, reads: Suck Blood From the Balls of Satan, You Ass Wipe. **We actually say pig skins, but we like to be polite in mixed company. ***It should be noted that Lansdale, like Dan Quayle, our erstwhile Vice President, wanted to spell potato with an "e" on the end here. He actually got in an argument with Bambi about it, and Bambi’s supposed to be stupid. Even Gort sided with Bambi and Webb on this one. Lansdale and Quayle, they can’t spell potato. On a personal note. Need it be said that our opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Mr. Chizmar, whose hand feeds us, and whose hand we bite in turn. Next time: Trash Theater Anniversary Office Party! Live! Blow by blow account! (Brought to you by those bastions of good taste, JoeR. Lansdale and David E. Webb, their ownselves.) Okay, we can’t get back into our offices yet, due to all those damn snakes, which seemed to have bred under one of the couches and produced a whole flock of baby copperheads, and our exterminator is currently in the hospital. Seems Billy Sue Constantine of We Pest The Pests, in spite of experience, misjudged the speed of a striking copperhead, and is now in the hospital with a vagina1 the size of Richard Nixon’s ego. We’re talking big, so big the vagina sleeps in a chair beside the bed. I mean, you look over at Billie Sue, lying on her side, her vagina in that chair beside her, it looks like someone has put a box of heart-shaped Valentine candy there, rested the box on its side. That’s exactly how it looks, except this box has a pulse. While we’re on such matters, we’d like to tell you this. Billie Sue, in that special spirit that’s made her the life of many a smoker and bachelor party, told us a story about how her ex-husband, Floyd, who played second accordion in a polka band, while helping her eliminate rattlesnakes from an outhouse, decided to take a leak, only to discover that a rattlesnake had somehow curled up under the rim of one of the two-holers—actually, she said shit had caked up under there hard enough to form a ledge and the snake had gone to sleep on it—and something about the look of Floyd’s vienna sausage doing the boogaloo above its head, spitting wee-wee, perhaps resembling some reptilian mating ritual, or more likely a snaky challenge, excited the rattler, and in defiance, it rose out of there and struck Floyd four square on the penis2. Floyd stumbled from the outhouse, fell out on the ground, the snake dangling from his joint3 with the tenacity of a Jehovah Witness with his foot in the door. Billie Sue said the irony of it was, way it swelled up, it was the first time Floyd had a hard-on in a year, and damn if he couldn’t use it. He died too. Billie Sue wouldn’t suck the poison out. She said she’d promised her boyfriend her lips would touch no other bulbous, throbbing member but his. (‘Course, this was before she accidentally backed over her boyfriend while he was sleeping in the driveway next to his water dish.) Billie Sue’s story is for those who think Dave and Joe are a little too raunchy. We offer it to you, the easily offended, and we offer our thanks to Billie Sue. And furthermore, for those among you who wrote letters to say stuff like, "Gee, your column is too raunchy, I’m fifty years old," well, we’re getting there ourselves, fifty we mean, and we can’t seem to clean up a bit, least not in this column. It brings the fucking worst out in us. In that spirit, let us pause to comment on all the negative mail we’ve received in the last month. To those letter writers we offer a heartfelt Fuck You. And, for the more overwhelming positive mail we’ve received, we’d like to offer our goddamnest thanks and gratitude, though if you want to put a dollar in your envelopes to help support culture here at Trash Theater, do so, as this will be our contribution to trickle-down economics, the benefactors being us, of course. But, we’re here for a movie column, aren’t we? Our situation is we got no Trash Theater to go to, and of course, that causes a loss of column ambience. We’ve really had trouble getting our spirits up. But tonight we may have the medicine for that, we have something special for you. This column is being written by penlight, alternately between Dave and Joe, at The Backroads Drive-In just off 1-20 near Bolivar, and folks, we’re talking sad, momentous occasion here. This is the last night at The Backroads. Next week the dozer comes in and levels the place for construction of a new Wal-Mart. That’s the bad news. The good news is tonight this last night, it’s Dusk to Dawn for one dollar. And the features are: The Bible, Viva Las Vegas, and something that sounds pretty salty and may involve Billie Sue Constantine in one of her earlier careers as an accomplice to producing on film the exalted two-second "money shot"4. Need we say more. The title is, Clam Bake. This is one of those old-fashioned drive-ins with the playground up front. You’ll remember, if you’ve gone to any drive-ins built before the mid-sixties. This was where the parents could send you after you’d knocked over your soft drink for the third time and put your buttery popcorn fingers on the car’s upholstery so much mosquitoes were starting to stick to it. And speaking of mosquitoes, we’ve got us a Skeeter Coil here, the original White Trash incense, rating right up there with used Kotex stuck to the bottom of the bathroom trash can and the runny, open-sore smell of a busted sewage pipe out back of a trailer park. This Skeeter Coil stuff is serious, as well it ought to be. You see, every car is a temple and the humans inside are just sacrament, the body and the blood for one of God’s favorite creatures, the skeeter—remember, it was his idea to put two of these motherfuckers on the ark. Yes sir, the skeeter, just a little angel carrying a small prayer to heaven. And when you light your Skeeter Coil, it’s actually in reverence, all that incense, ‘cause it ain’t like that shit actually kills or runs off skeeters. No sir, it attracts them. About the only way a skeeter will die from a Skeeter Coil, is if he’s so drunk on your blood he lights on the goddamn coil and catches on fire. Anyway, this is the last night at the drive-in here, and everyone has come to enjoy whatever fate has in store for them tonight. We’re all optimistic. There hasn’t been a killing here in a couple of months, and maybe some people have been storing up for this close-out night. The management has invited everyone to bring their BBQ pits and fixin’s, so things are dangerous already, what with dozens of BBQ pits shooting flames ten feet into the air and idiots squeezing charcoal lighter fluid into the fires as casual as pissing on an ant nest. So intense is the flaming response, it’s peeling the paint off the cars next to the cookers. I guess the management is allowing this ‘cause they know they won’t be selling too many of their hot dogs cooked on the weenie rotator, the one that passes the weenies by a sixty-watt bulb every few seconds. Way you know the weenies are done is they break into a sweat. Dave here. It’s not even good dark yet, and already Joe is down at the front under the screen swinging wildly on the rickety swing set and making it dangerous for those passing by within swing-chain reach. He’s already knocked the cowboy hat off one fella and a fight ensued, but Joe is unhurt because the guy fell down when first struck, and Joe, in a moment of good sportsmanship, kicked him in the head while he was there, and the man’s children, ranging in age from five to twelve, have had to tote him back to his car, and come back for his wheel chain. Well, I’m going to join Joe down at the swings. Looks like he’s having a little trouble with a kid over there. The little bully has pushed Joe off the swing set and is making him eat dirt up by the screen. And who knows, that wheel chair motherfucker might come back. Mutually written movie report to follow.   

The Bible (Actually they just do Genesis)

102 long goddamn minutes Starring: John Huston, Michael Parks, Richard Harris, George C. Scott, Ava Gardner, Peter O’Toole, and a special guest appearance by God. Directed by: John Huston and narrated by J. Huston Well, up here under the screen gives us a serious view, though the original screen has been replaced by a sheet of corrugated tin coated with Sherman Williams flat white paint. This makes the movie look as if it’s being shown on a large, Ruffles potato chip. (It was all Joe could do to resist putting an "e" on the end of potato. Him and Dan Quayle. D.W.) We thought since we’d been missing a flock of Bible study classes, God would let a spectacle such as this make up for it. We see this, we ought to be good for a lot of lessons missed. We might even have some credit coming. We figure since we’ve spent so much church-offering money on worldly goods (movies, Big Red, sody waters, Weekly World News, fire balls and peanut patties), that a few bucks given to the drive-in management will suffice as an offering. Hell, they’re showing The Bible ain’t they? They got to be good people. Little ways into it, we got cricks in our necks straining to see Eve’s bush, which was continually, and artfully, concealed by shadow, a twist of the hip, and a lot of rear angle. Meaning a lot of ass was exposed, but shit, you can see that in an ad in a magazine. There was also this thing with her titties. They were covered by her hair, and when the wind blew, or she moved, the hair stuck to the titties. This is frustrating. We wondered what kind of glue was used to keep the hair on the titties. Then there’s this Michael Parks playing Adam. He hasn’t got a hammer. No matter what he does, no matter from what angle he’s shown, no hammer is visible, no plums swinging from side to side. Lot of gals are gonna be as disappointed as we are about Eve’s bush and titties, and those of mixed persuasions ain’t gonna get no thrill either. In fact, the bi-folks are gonna be double mad. Sometimes, art can be annoying. ‘Course, considering the way some of the cars out in the drive-in are rocking, it seems to have been enough to stimulate some of the less intelligent out here. ‘Course, there’s only one person in some of those cars, so God only knows what the hell they’re doing. But back to the movie. What’s the deal with the serpent? He has Eve eat fruit from this forbidden tree, which God set up there to tease these two people, then Eve has Adam eat some of the fruit. Then Adam and Eve know suddenly they’re without trousers, and that this stuff they been doing, this sticky business where they get dirt and leaves in their ass cracks and explore each other’s nether parts, well, it’s actually some nasty stuff. And up until then, they just thought they were having fun. Now Adam knows he has a pecker and it gives him no joy. And Eve, she’s an asshole. She’s the one fucked it up for the rest of us. Or what about the serpent? He pointed the fruit out, and lost his legs over it. Now he’s been split into a zillion different species of serpent, and some of them are still pissed about this and will bite you on account of it. Poor Adam and Eve. God, who up until now hasn’t given one flying damn that his creations have been playing hide the salami, is suddenly pissed off, and he throws them out of the Garden of Eden. We don’t get it. There’s only two people in the world, they want to fuck in their garden and eat fruit off trees, what’s the problem? It’s not like they’re gonna get bodily fluid stains on someone’s upholstery or something. Anyway, the movie is quite a Bible lesson, but by the Salty Dog of Abraham, it raised a few questions, some more confusing than the serpent, fruit, and fuck business discussed above. Let’s take this Noah guy. Wow, what a job the Big Man gave him. "Round up all the animals two by two, Noah, and put them on the ark you got to build, because in my intimate mercy, I’m gonna drown every sonofabitch outside of your family That way, you can all interbreed later." "Wow," says Noah. "No shit?" "No shit. Now, I want two elephants, two giraffes, two skeeters, two flies, two worms, two of every motherfuckin’ species. I want...." "God, excuse me," Noah might say. "But what about the other animals? The other giraffes, etc? They’re not wicked. They’ll be drowned with the evil folks." "Fuck em. I want two hippos. Two of every ass-licking animal on the earth. Don’t forget snakes, birds, flat worms, and heart worms...." "Excuse me, Mr. God. Captain, sir. Don’t you think, since you’re like, you know, gonna drown the shit out of the world, we could lose the vermin. It’s like a big chance." "What? And decrease suffering? You think those little bastards are some mean shit, those flies and skeeters and worms, that ain’t mean, wait until I invent AIDS." "AIDS, Captain God, sir?" "Ahead of your time. Look, I’m a busy deity here. Places to make, people to destroy, things to fuck up. Just do what I tell you." "Yes, sir." Okay, dear readers, you add all those animals up and put ‘em on a boat. You got to wonder how big’s this boat? The Bible tells you, but still, it doesn’t come out a boat that big. You couldn’t get a family and the Lufkin, Texas petting zoo on a boat that size. You’d have serious trouble getting on a couple elephants. And say you got all the animals on the boat, and the rain starts, the weather changes, the barometric pressure shifts dramatically, man, we’re talking some waste products here. For animals, something like that happens, it’s like that first, hot cup of coffee in the morning. Some wee-wee is gonna fly. Then you got number two. And when you’re talking big animals, you’re talking some serious dumps. This is okay for the flies. They got to have this stuff to eat and live in, drop their babies, those cuddly little maggots, but say you’re Shem, one of Noah’s sons, and the barometric pressure shifts and you can’t open a window fast enough, and then Noah, Dad, he comes to you with a shovel and a wheel barrow. You’re gonna be busy, that’s what we’re trying to tell you. Get that finished, it’s about time for the regular dumps these animals got to do. And say Noah’s got to house the tape worms and all. Who gets to be designated host? "Shem, come here would you?" says Dad. "I got a little something I want you to swallow. Two of all these worms, and by the Great Asshole of God Almighty, don’t you dare let your rotting teeth scrape, or in any way harm, one of these worms. God’s own special little creatures." And once the ark comes into port, and all the animals get off the magic boat, how long was it before the lions remembered who they were and scarfed a few bunnies? Or rather, why didn’t they scarf a few bunnies? No telling how many species ceased to exist right there. You know, stuff like the galblip. Don’t hear about it much these days, do you? That’s because Tony Tiger ate both those sonofabitches while they were, in their own animalistic way, praising the glory of God. Or say one of a species got eaten. Well, in a few years there goes a whole race of animals. Maybe, in their haste to get off the boat, an elephant steps on some rare form of worm Shem has just regurgitated, killing out a whole future that would have been filled with some unique disease fueled by worms in shit. It could have been heartbreaking. And now that we think about it, what were those animals eating on board? Some of the plant species brought along? Can lions and tigers and bears be vegetarians for forty days and forty nights? Did Noah bring a few extra bunnies to feed the carnivores? Plus, what about genetic diversity? What were these animals and Noah’s family drinking? Wee-wee? You got to have a lot of water for big critters and humans for forty days and forty nights. Was the water they were floating on fresh water? Maybe that’s the answer. But if it was, how come the oceans didn’t run into it and salt it up? There’s some serious Biblical questions here that won’t be answered in The Old Testament index. Then we get the story of The Tower of Babel, where we meet Nimrod, whose kind of the top dog and looks like Alice Cooper without a snake. Did you know everyone on earth once spoke the same language? Least until Nimrod in his arrogance tried to build a tower so high and beautiful it would rival God. God got so mad at Nimrod, he not only punished him, but all the innocents being forced to build the tower. Did it by causing them to speak different languages. This fact cleans up a lot of linguistic problems. God made different languages in one stroke, as punishment. But knowing this, you got to ask some things. How long did it take everyone to teach someone else their language so at least two people could hang out together? And for there to be new races, once again, we’re back to the serious fucking problem. One guy, he’s speaking French, and this lady he meets, she speaks some Danish dialect, so they got to teach each other their language, decide what language they like best, which race they want to be, then some serious fucking and child raising is in order, and of course, to make this work, in God’s fashion, lot of incest has to go on, ‘cause teaching everyone a new language is a pain in the ass, takes up time. Another point. About everyone in this movie is white. Where are the Brothers, and the Chinese? The Texans? We could go on about other events in the movie, like the story of Lot, and how he was willing to offer his daughters to the bad people of Sodom to fuck in place of giving over a couple of angels he was protecting, who didn’t need protection. Or we could talk about the part where later he fucked his daughters, and if this was in the Bible, why was it left out of the movie? It should have been there. In the Bible, God seldom missed an opportunity for some relative to fuck another relative. It was kind of a standard plot device, along with someone getting hurt or brutalized in some terrible fashion. God knew how to keep things from getting boring. We could probably spend a little time on Abraham, and how God tells him to kill his son as a test, just because God likes to know where he stands in the hearts of his chosen people. But we did all that, we’d be here till about the time the new Wal-Mart was opening its doors. But, before we move on to Viva Las Vegas, let us leave you with a movie snack suggestion for The Bible. Unleavened bread. We brought with us some of Dave’s hot water cornbread. We also brought a big container of black-eyed peas with sausage meat in them, but we guess that isn’t Biblical. But the cornbread’s close. There’s no yeast in it, and you can sail it like a miniature frisbee if you get bored. All right, all right. The Cemetery Dance Police are cutting us off, and we’ve still got the rest of the night to go, but we’ll report on the other two movies next time. Anyway, before we leave you, we got to admit we’re in kind of a tizzy right now. The drive-in is surrounded by a tin and a three strand barb wire fence, and people stand in the woods nearby with their lawn chairs waiting for it to get dark, then they come out and hop over the fence and set up front near the screen. One fella, with a lawn chair, has snagged his balls on the top wire and is yodeling like a Country and Western singer. People have all turned on their headlights illuminating the work for the ambulance drivers who’ve just arrived. Some fool produced a pair of wire cutters, and before we could get to him, he cut the wire. You should have seen that wire spring twelve feet into the air, snapping into a tight coil, flinging the ole boy’s nut sack into a thirty-foot, moonlit arc, terminating in a hole-in-one in some gravitationally impaired lady’s Dr. Pepper cup, which fortunately, turned out to be well iced. One of the E.M.T.s wrestled her to the ground, strained off the Dr. Pepper between his fingers, and is now screaming to keep them nuts on ice until they ship him off to Houston to get them hooked back up. The ambulance has just whipped out of here, hot with lights and siren, smashing two ice-chests, a lawn chair, and something that had been moving under a blanket, but is now being ignored as the car lights and horns have ceased, and the projector is rolling, and here comes, Viva Las Vegas!   

NOTES: (This means some little notes that explain confusing things in the text.) 1For our not so cultured readers, vagina is not a Southern state that fought for the Confederacy. It’s a pussy. A poontang. A cunt. A gash. A slit. The honey hole. A happy, sucking wound. A weenie-squeezer. Snatch. The ole sausage grinder. The Venus Mound. Her womanhood, etc. Do we make ourselves clear? 2This is not, as David has suggested, a French word for several ballpoint pens. We’re talking hammer here. Tool. Rod. The ole hanging meat. The piston. The bobbin’ dog. The battering ram. The dick. The cock. The flesh pistol. The meat cutter. His manhood. Clear? 3See above. 4In porno films, when the meat pipe blows the mayonnaise, this is called "the money shot" because it’s the one the viewers (mostly male) want to see.  

"Trash Theater, Part 2" originally appeared in Cemetery Dance Magazine. It later appeared in A Fist Full of Stories [and Articles], a collection published by CD Publications. "Trash Theater, Part 2" © 1992 Joe R. Lansdale and David E. Webb. All Rights Reserved.