Welcome, welcome All Hallow’s Eve! Anyone feeling ghoulish yet? Just wait. It’s coming. I know, I know: Promises, promises — even as we all keep asking one another the very same question this year, repeatedly: How did things ever reach such a pretty pass, where even Halloween’s most twistedly grotesque frightmares now pale in revulsion to life’s other 364 days in mundane, pleasant-valley-America? Take just last week, alone:
- The BDSM bondage pix of defiant House candidate Chris Gallant got unearthed by TMZ. Say, whu?
- Porn star Lulu Lovebottom decided to throw his own suicide party. Gurl!
- And Cornell’s frat master whined he’s being ignored as a “sexual survivor” of sodomy — at the hands of his own victim, no less — whilst he was “incapacitated.” Pfft!
- More nauseously, still, come Dec. 3, the United States will begin televising public executions. That’s right, snuff films brought to you live, folks, via firing squad!
Upon our descent into this delirium of a despot regime, how untroubling it suddenly is that Trump’s every-day-of-the-week lunacy practically echoes milquetoast-normal: “They could take out a city,” stammered the moribund Orangutan L’Orange, “let them take — let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego,” sneered our derelict leader of the free world, during a rally speech on Oct. 5 in Nebraska.
Come again, sir? Did the fat lips of this fool quite hallucinatorily, without hyperbole and hardly hypothetically — just concede, as collateral damage, our bluest West Coast meccas to nuclear adversaries as casually as stabbing pilloried marshmallows into a firepit?
People: Something spooky’s gonna give here soon. The bitter end, after all, hardly begins with a mushroom cloud. Undoubtedly, nothing much terrifying even happens at first except, you know, the power goes out. The pasta water in the kitchen stops boiling. Your PC crashes, and along with it, your entire electro-gamut of Apple paraphernalia.
And as for that Mr. Hankey’s vibrating dildo you’ve got stashed in the nightstand? Hopefully, it’s juiced-up enough to make it through date night by candlelight. Enjoy things rising for the occasion while you still can.
Greater concerns are about to start piling up, quick and fast: Are the flashlight’s batteries rechargeable? Is the water in the creek out back even potable? How long will the toilet paper last? Is there enough pet food to ensure Lancelot won’t have to be shot before watching him starve?
And for those caught in their vehicles running errands? No worries; your SUV simply rolls to a gradual stop. Whew! Thankfully, you’re not trapped in a metal tube, 36,000 feet above terra firma, praying Sully’s manning the cockpit.
Certainly, the power’s bound to be reinstated just any minute now, well before the freezer starts dethawing, right? Dream on. All component parts for the entire North American grid are manufactured in — where else? — China. America’s impressively gigantic transformers all hum with secretly installed, built-in back doors receptive to electromagnetic pulses (EMPs), permitting their country of origin total access to tamper with at will. One asks who but an oafishly-orange idiot could never have imagined paper tigers covertly playing the long game?
Ho hum. In the meantime, just what’s the general populace expected now to do? Open 350 million beeswax candle emporiums? The bees have all vanished! So, until the world as we still know it stops turning, I’ve more pressing current engagements at hand to consume my energies, such as preparing to receive my nephew this very weekend — who we weren’t sure would even make it past the sunny side of 21.
Despite numerous incarcerations, one couldn’t help but admire his creative humor. My favorite of Addison’s get-out-of-jail-free tricks bordered on genius in its bare simplicity: No sooner would his cell door clang shut, than he’d promptly strip off all his clothes, hurl them (nekkid as a Neanderthal) at the night watchman’s desk, rake his skull across the iron bars back and forth and scream, “Rape!” Moments later, my brother would receive a phone call from the precinct: “Mr. Russell, we’re willing to reduce your son’s bail to zero, if you’d be willing to come pick him up . . . now.”
Addison ultimately bottomed-out three years ago, requiring inducement into a medical coma after his lungs mysteriously collapsed and he spent four days hooked up to a breathing machine — by all medical dogma, a straight one-way flatline to the graveyard. And yet he somehow defied expectations. Upon snapping awake, presuming he’d been unconscious for years, Lazarus’s first miraculous words were, “Have all my warrants expired?”
Last summer, whether a miracle, an epiphany or just plain exhaustion from innumerable crimes and misdemeanors of a misspent youth, Addison courageously mustered up something from within his soul, asked his mother drive him to the courthouse and voluntarily turned himself in. Now, residing in Gulf Shores, of radiant health and holding down a steady job, he fully acknowledges personal accountability. Recognizing his former delinquencies stemmed from a frighteningly zaftig sense of entitlement, my nephew corrected all his juvenile mistakes.
Growing up, it’s called.
Sweet readers, should you happen to run into a wide-eyed Alabaman youth out on the rainbow circuit this weekend, please give him a warm welcome to Dallas: Addison, along with his stellar boyfriend Michael of Biloxi. They’ve been dating for over a year now — a personal best for both! I’m rooting for them. Michael is as fine a fellow anyone could ever hope to meet — charming, handsome, affable, mannerly and polite. They make a beautiful couple.
Hopefully, these youngbloods might even be able to assist Uncle Howard further checkmark our now necessary Trumpian prepper list: Locate Grampa’s shortwave radio; stock up plenty on rechargeable batteries; send off for some Faraday cages. Hunkering in dread that doomsday’s not on the agenda for tomorrow.
My recent gun range lessons, at least, have proven surprisingly therapeutic: If and when anarchy descends, sage has it that one sits much prettier when capable of defending himself and not needing to, than one who needs to and is not be able. The midterms will surely tell.
Testing, testing! Anybody out there? Come in, NORAD? USNORTHCOM? Anybody?
—Howard Lewis Russell
Sweet November’s horn of plenty is just around the corner, guys. Y’all have any good recipes for punkin’ pie? My mouth is watering already: AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.