Never Rex!

NF, ONE L
Issue ELEVEN

1. As I recently gave up halfway through “The Dark Tower,” I was reminded that, teenage zeal aside, on a sentence-by-sentence basis Steven King is a terrible writer. And yet, his ability to produce plot like a gold coin from a giggling niece’s ear, one that demands you find out how it resolves regardless of sentence quality, is a form of genius. The maddening desire to finish a piece of mediocre fiction may be the greatest skill any word jockey could possess in the end. At this point in my life, where I’m practically too distracted to finish a grilled cheese, the work of the genius recluse, with all its admirable descriptive flourishes and clever filigree that ultimately only looks inward, inspires in me an overwhelming desire to never-complete.

2. King Diamond, still touring, the Danish lead howler from Mercyful Fate, a band that made Twisted Sister seem like a bunch of dudes from Jersey who Actually Were Gonna Take It, at least if referring to free makeup samples from Bergdorf’s, is welcome over at Castle Beaudoin any time.

3. In 1933 King Kong was in love with Fay Wray, the jungle ingenue of terrestrial zoology’s favorite biplane-swatting megafauna. Mainly because of her explorer’s outfit, the tattered remnants of which explored flashes of bare thigh in every other scene and back in 1933 was the equivalent of a raunchy OnlyFans feed in today’s dollars. In 1976, our boy Kong doubled down on hapless Jessica Lange, reinforcing the notion that traditional manliness and stoic Cis-primate posturing will ultimately always prevail over nerdy/ethical cameramen (Jeff Bridges) and their willingness to defy corporate interests (Kong, in chains, brought back to America and anointed Gillette Mach III pitchman). In 2005, Naomi Watts reprised Wray’s Fay to generally stultifying effect, the movie unwisely gambling on the sexual magnetism between Adrian Brody and Jack Black.

4. On April 4th, 1968, Martin Luther King was shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee, less than twenty-four hours after his “I Have A Dream” speech.

5. In 1973, Billie Jean King defeated Bobby Riggs in a straight-sets singles match watched by 50 million Americans, held at the Houston Astrodome. While it was a seminal moment in both women’s rights, gender equality, and the mass de-closeting of lesbian sexuality, Riggs was a notoriously degenerate gambler with huge unpaid debts, mob connections, and a willingness to bet against himself. Although the fact that it was fixed, in a way, makes the payoff even better.

6. In 768, Charlemagne rose to become King of the Franks. His name was Carolus Magnus, Latin for “Charles The Great” or the Frenchified Charles Le Magne, which is amusing, as his father was “Pepin The Short” and his sons “Pepin The Hunchback” and “Lothair The Bald”. Charlemagne was also head of the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy nor Roman, really just the Caroliginian Empire, which is to say Germanic tribes/city states that took marching orders from Pope Leo III. Although he sure did Christianize the Saxons at the point of a spear at the Massacre Of Verden, in which fields of Pagan dead stacked three-high learned, as they took their last breaths, their lord and savior was not the modernish version of Odin they called Wodan, and so would no longer be sacrificing to The Irminsul, a rock pillar a whole lot like a cross, instead they would bleed into grass consecrated by a more loving + spanking new biblical theology. Charlemagne, at that point, declared himself Suzerain of Saxony, which is fun to type. Eventually he died.

7. Elvis “The King” Presley, in the Latter Fatter stage, had a special plane and on-call pilot whose purpose was to fly to Colorado to pick up his favorite sandwich from his favorite diner, one he regularly had a late-night craving for, called the Fool’s Gold Loaf, estimated at around 10,000 calories, which was a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with a jar of jelly, two packs of bacon, and an entire jar of peanut butter. He was known, on particularly tough nights while strapped to the yoke of Valium, Col. Tom Parker’s aftershave, and Impossible Fame, to down more than one.

8. Freddie King is the greatest guitar player you’ve likely never heard of, and I could happily listen to the chickin pickin runs of “Hideaway” on a loop for six weeks straight.

9. Donald J. Trump is, to my everlasting dismay, my president. But he is not my king. If he’s yours, at this late date, at this point in time, after the towering Everest of readily available evidence pointing to his rare and dangerous combination of self-importance, cretinism, and venality, you deserve to be treated like the expendable serf that he regards every other person on the planet who is not Donald J. Trump as, with malice. Which includes both random lashings and Primae Noctis. Wake the fuck up.
​
10. Friends, today is a great day to get out in the streets and yell some. Venting against the madness is cathartic, and silence is pure testicular-free collaboration. There is no longer, if there ever was, a middle ground.